Yep, avoid working for friends and family. 

I’m getting ready to make my next move in 2025 and I’m contemplating on staying here and buying a multi family property as an investment out of state (only an hour away) which would be a lot less capital and have a lot more land lord friendly laws or buy another multifamily as a primary residence locally and hack that property I’m single and live alone.

This district is zoned to support mixed use and multi family residential structures of up to 7 stories, so we will likely maximize our development based on that zoning. 

With a family and kids the best house hack is a house and cottage or duplex option.

The previous owners turned in into a single family home.

I live in Florida but my family is from Portsmouth and I just there for Labor Day.

With current interest rates, and they are at least 1% higher with potentially additional points for non owner occupied property, it is hard to find properties that will allow for positive cash flow after paying the mortgage, if you are looking for money for the down payment from a private lender, those are normally at higher than market and I am not sure it would be possible to pay it off.... please remember you need to take into account that you may not have a tenant for a certain amount of time, a tenant may stop paying rent, or you will have a big ticket item to fix, so I would wait if I were you and save to have enough for the down payment and closing costs and perhaps some money set aside for repairs. you also want to make sure that you have your own emergency fund outside of the money needed for the investment property because life happens ....

I've helped investors to sell fix and flips, multi-family homes, land, you name it!

If this was me, I would leverage my equity into a commercial office/retail/industrial multi-unit or multi-family property.

You want to talk to friends and family on this, I don't know anyone who would see this on the Internet and be like, yeah, this sounds like exactly what I am looking to do with my money.