Since you'll be owner-occupying, take advantage of low down payment loans like FHA (3.5%), Conventional (5%), VA (0%), or a 203k loan for renovations.

The payment is roughly $260 a month.

Second pro is that you get to lower your living expenses or live "rent free" by having your tenants pay for your mortgage payment.

Which means that they pay you a down payment and you finance the properties to them.

This would need to be structured that if your rent is at or below your mortgage payment, the portion of the mortgage payment going towards principal is more than all other expenses (and hopefully more than budgeted capex). 

House hacking is an excellent strategy, especially with the potential to use an FHA loan to secure a property with a low down payment. 

•Pausing payments if necessary•While building home equity with loan paydown from rental income, I'm also rebuilding the equity within my WLI with the same rental plus my current active business.

Without this workout, the down payment requirements, current levels of interest rates and cost of the transaction would not be incentivizing enough to for investment. 

We would all love to have that note that has 5 years of perfect payments, 800+ credit score and a 20-25% down payment. 

For some buyers it would end up being less than a 2.5-3% commish, and for others more.The tricky part for the buyer is it would have to come out of their pocket in addition to the down payment, whereas a commission paid by the seller at closing is included in the purchase price and absorbed into their loan (usually unless paying cash obviously) so the buyer only has to make the down payment out of pocket.