I am also a great believer in investing when there is distress and deploying capital when you can.If you are looking for yield in the short run, Manhattan may not be for you.

We could only manage about 10 properties or grow big enough to hire employees because in the middle of June I deployed for 6 months. 

Rough neighborhood likely not a worry for a single Marine, but not a place to leave your family when on duty or deployed.

I have a desire to support uplifting/encouraging art in Houston, for the art (music, performing arts, visual arts) is the heartbeat of the culture of a city, help propel the local church I am a part of to new levels of influence and ability to help (they have a large prison and drug addict ministry), and to provide future employment/contract work that can help establish good character and personal development in said employees.Real Estate/Business has the potential to impact on a city level what would be nearly impossible to do in the position of a W2 salary, even at higher levels in the corporate ladder IMO.This impact potential gets me absolutely jazzed.And so since November I have devoured books, burned through podcasts, employed my excel and access skillz, joined a local REI club, met up with local investors, read numerous BP threads/blogs, and now begun the actual deployment of action steps.The beginning of March has marked the real start of a new endeavor along side my engineering day job... heading down the Wholesaling route, seeing as deals are the must-have corner stone for this entire business. 

Exceptions being repairs, deployment if previously lived there, spouse or child living in it instead. 

Generate another 5-10 deals prior to deploying your money and this one may not look as good anymore.Just some thoughts.  

@Dusty Bowling if you have a first-class group of workers, all you need to grow is a project manager to supervise the day-to-day details of running multiple jobs and managing troop deployment.  

They may be more inclined to hop on an upcoming deployment and use their orders to get out of the lease so they can put their stuff in storage, or they may be inclined to not renew after one year or break the lease and buy a home themselves.

Thus these individuals generally don't want to keep excess cash tied up in projects because it lowers the return on this equity and doesn't allow one to control as many assets as they could if they exchanged, refinanced, or otherwise deployed the capital to a more efficient vehicle for growth.  

$900K or 75% pulled out is a lot of capital that can be deployed 'more effectively' to meet whatever your goals are AND you keep your original performing 4-plex that is now leveraged more effectively for a cash on cash return.