I am curious myself on how purchasing a wedding venue business would turn out.

Purchase price: $225,000 Cash invested: $40,000 Sale price: $375,000 Bought a large 4 bedroom pool home and flipped

This allows you to use all of the tax and deferred depreciation recapture to purchase the larger MF propertyA consolidation exchange is where you sell multiple investment properties to purchase a larger and nicer investment property, but you also get the benefit of using all of the tax you would have had to pay to your advantage.

A "miserable corporate job to no where" isn't all that bad - health insurance benefits, 401k matching, probably some sort of discount stock purchase plan, stability, lenders like it.

Why do you think purchase contracts are so long and have such small print?

What's the purchase price? 

Purchase price: $240,000 Cash invested: $60,000 I purchased this duplex in distressed condition using owner financing for $240K and secured a $60K hard money loan for renovations.

You may get better results by purchasing a duplex, triplex, or fourplex.Here's a guide that describes what good cash flow looks like and how to analyze a property.

If this is your first real estate purchase I would stay away from auctions, there's too much risk involved especially with where price points are in your market.

But after working with the family, we purchased it for $42,000 and got to work.We had some unique challenges, like dealing with one of the heirs who wasn’t very cooperative and required a payoff to sign the paperwork we needed for clear title.