I think you need to treat those 2-4 buildings almost like larger building looking for upside in rents and/or reductions in expenses in order to get it to cash flow.

My main goal is to build good fundamental knowledge so any and all help is appreciated!

When I was starting, I focused on building my network, attending networking events, and was fortunate to find a mentor.

We built a single family home version of a 2 bed 1 bath with surface parking at cost with no profit all in with land for 175k in newark ohio, a suburb of columbus ohio. when we push that to 3 units and closer to the city for our build to rent model the numbers go way better. a 30k slab for a single family home is 30k, a 30k slab for a triplex is 10k a door. we designed a 2 bed 1 bath design at 668 sq ft and it's very good layout even I would live there, but I would never build anything that small again. there's no economies of scale. you need density and shared lines, resources, shared roof shared slab, shared windows, etc the cost goes way down.

you can build triplexes in columbus for cheaper. if it was more about you living in Grandview could work out but that's a tough exit one unit won't even get 0.5% rule.

but if i go in a LLC with them i get hit with the tax from the sale of the homeThe GC and the flipper were just going to split the profits from the sale of the home and they were going to pay me 2%/12% for the duration of the build. 

But via building, it's possible. 

I use it for the same reason to build a REI network because I am looking to be an active wholesaler soon.

For me it’s building connections with buyers in a new market. 

If you build relationships with the right wholesalers, you can get access to deals before they ever hit the market.