Now I will give my opinion on buying a four plex verses building one. 

The issue we often run into is the pure cost to build...you have ideas or ways you are working around that?

I signed up to help provide more value to my home building company by buying raw land and not being beholden to the market for finished lots.

Trump is talking of selling off government buildings and getting the federal government or GSA mostly out of the real estate business. 

at 26 - you could build a portfolio just by house hacking every 1-2 years for the next 5-10 years.

Your realtor should be the backbone of your business and be able to help with sending you personalized deal flow, building the rest of your real estate team (PMs, GCs, lenders, etc), showing you the good/bad neighborhoods, developing scope of work and estimating renovations, and so much more!

I would like to build a duplex on it for long term rental income.

I am an out of state investor.How have dealt with this issue>Neal Schadler There are multiple property managers in the "build your investing team" section that can help here. 

Eventually they will build out a system or understand the value of a good PM company and what to ask, look for and keep an eye on. 

I ended up building one form zero and built 8 homes and the idea was to make them into a unitque venue.