I love talking shop!!

Neal Bawa sounds like he knows what he's talking about, but his track record is terrible.

It's usually best to talk with your neighbors about your plans and get their support as one of the variance tests is that the requested relief does not cause a public health issue or alter the essential character of the neighborhood.Try googling "tests for a variance in [your state]" and talk with your local zoning department.

Instead of paying off the old loan and netting the rest, you talk to the first seller who you've been paying for a year and get permission to substitute collateral. 

@Kaleb Johnsonstay local. go to meetups. build a network. talk to people. ask questions. visit properties.

Sure @Rebecca Moreira, interested in talking further

Thank you all who responded, I plan on spending some time driving the neighborhood and talking to anyone at the local coffee shop who will talk to me. 

If you need advice it's great to talk to people who have been successful at it.

What the people that I talk to find is that they don't need to be confined to one area.  

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.