House hacking by purchasing a duplex, triplex, or single-family home with extra rooms can help you reduce or eliminate housing costs while building equity.

You'll need money for: closing costs, down payment (if any), operating capital to get the construction/rehab started (most HMLs reimburse you in draws for the work completed), along with some liquid reserves on top of that.

Houston, on the other hand, has higher appreciation potential, a growing job market, but also higher entry costs and more competition.

Holding costs should be lower than using all of HELOC. 50k won’t cut most purchase prices, so have to use some of HELOC too. 

Go ahead and file.In real life it costs you time to figure it out and money.

the value added versus cost to add, especially in single family zoned areas, typically results in a large negative initial position.  

An important thing to note is to learn how to calculate estimated closing costs.

B borderline A market, is the cost to build worth the risk atm?

Today it has good cash flow (~$6k/month using 49% expense ratio) and is up ~$1m above costs.  

We have been doing this constantly in Boise as we are such a high appreication market, but still more cost effective than CA.