My wife intends to continue working so that helps for sure.

If one or more units are vacant, the remaining units often don’t provide enough cash flow to cover expenses, making it harder to meet operating costs.Maintenance costs: A fourplex comes with four times the appliances, plumbing, HVAC systems, and other components to maintain, leading to significantly higher repair and maintenance expenses than single-family homes.If you want to see the detailed calculation, read this BP blog - More Units Doesn’t Mean More Money—Why a Single-Family Home Can Beat a Fourplex.Resale value: Multi-family properties have a limited buyer pool—mainly investors—who base their offers on CAP rates.

Seems like a very strict penalty if this is not followed through.The CTA provides that willfully reporting or attempting to report false or fraudulent beneficial ownership, or willfully failing to report or make updates to the reported data shall be punished with a civil penalty of up to $500/day while the violation continues (up to $10,000) and a criminal penalty of up to two years in prison. 

I’d like to continue with real estate investing despite its challenges.

And Sec8 sounds great, but comes with it's own issues.Add it all up you get a low dollar, but high headache strategy, which is a challenge that gets amplified, especially when you are operating remote.

But after a year or so I want to purchase my first single family home and BRRRR it and continue BRRRRR'n SFH's. honestly, I'm not sure if this is a good idea, or good start.

When you do that, you can get better pricing and leaves less room for error.The best advice is to push forward as quick as possible, fail forward, and always continue to introspect on what you would do differently and then ACTUALLY go back and implement that change (easier to say than do).

I currently have 30k in cash and continue to look for a solid option to finance.

what's your intention for continually raising capital?

They had caught some trespassers.We have continued to upgrade our security systems as capabilities have increased and costs have decreased.