I decided to stay local with my investing for now and focus on condos/townhomes or live in flips.

Still, we've re-opened our VRBO listing and have just started a listing with Mini Stays to see how they perform. 

There are a few Dundalk neighborhoods I'd stay away from but for the most part it's a great area for house hacking/BRRRR.

The thing about condos is the HOA will go up and your mortgage stays the same so you will end up losing by the end of the mortgage. 

We do get people coming through for ETSU and Milligan graduations, temporary stays for the VA, and some tourism in the summer and fall but you're not going to stay heavily booked. 

I'm an investor and mortgage broker and have options for loans that go as low as $75,000 and down payments as low as 15%, which makes it easier to stay above $75,000.

I prefer to stay further from the coast and hopefully further from major storm/flooding events (potentially lower insurance costs).  

I'd love to stay in touch and keep track of how you're doing as well!

Staying local and house hacking—especially now, before kids—gives you so much flexibility to set yourselves up for long-term success.Your financial foundation is super strong, and house hacking a quad sounds like an amazing first step for you two.

I know what my ideal life looks like in ten years, unfortunately, I don’t feel like I can have my ideal life now because I am having to stay in the state that I am in until we can move without risk of my husband losing custody of his child, which will be in about 10 years so believe it or not I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I want the future to be like.