That’s great advice Taz, I’m currently working on saving enough money to get started, house hacking is hard for me at the moment because I just bought a house 2 years ago, I would have to sell my house(which is in a great neighborhood great location) and use that money to fund the duplex which isn’t totally out of the question, I would like to keep the house if possible but also would like to get real estate investing more.

Did you close this with a hard money loan?

Anti-money-laundering laws are largely to blame.  

If you can get a better primary residential HELOC rate than you can a hard money bridge loan I would say yes.

If you decide to revisit STRs, you might want to explore properties where you can project expenses independently, such as using local STR forums or online tools to estimate maintenance, management, and occupancy costs.For networking and strategy-building, you might find local meetups or groups beneficial.

LLCs tend to be beneficial for financing options if using hard money as it can be required depending on the program.

I have the money to buy now but I would rather do creative financing and use as little money as possible out of my own pocket. looking to start with BRRR method but maybe should start with a wholesale first to fund that?

Any good resources for learning about hard money loans?

He doesn’t even need the money; he just wants to give back / pay forward. “ . 

Once your emergency account has a reasonable amount in it, whatever that means to you, you might want to think about steering that payroll money into the investment savings account from each pay check and leave the emergency account money as is.