The real first question is "why put your hard earned money into doing the hardest & riskiest kind of real estate investing"? 

It usually takes a little extra work for you to keep them happy but very doable.Good luck to you!

If you want to stick to the DC/MD/VA area, you might want to consider house hacking a SFH and Airbnbing an extra level/room/basement/crawlspace/fallout shelter-- like you said multis are few and far between here, but you might be able to find some in areas that show up as that beautiful deep navy blue on the Trulia crime map.I live in northern VA but do all my investing outside the area. 

These three - the NNN properties, Land leases, the TIC and the DST  are the four options used by the great majority of our clients who are reluctant to give up those hard earned tax dollars at the end like you expressed.They're all 1031 compliant so tax deferral works the same. 

Depending on how long you are staying, there are a few ways you can pinch some extra pennies from the extra space in your home.

You should start doing as much research as you can on your own before you go spending your hard earned money.

You don't owe anything extra to a service member than you would anyone else. 

I get to live in this property as a primary residence for free and have some extra cash flow every month.  

In RI it's attorneys who handle the escrow/closing, rather than title companies.Usually in Rhode Island, if you're using an agent and the standard RIAR (RI Association of Realtors) purchase and sale forms, you wouldn't engage an attorney until your offer is accepted (which in RI is the same as getting a signed P&S back), unless you or the seller is putting something out of the ordinary in the P&S (usually in the additional provisions on the last page but there are a few other places extra language can be added).In that case you might want to bring in your attorney to double check the language you or (especially) the seller are proposing, just so you understand what you'd be committing to.I'm not sure what your connection is to Rhode Island but since your profile says you're in Maryland there are probably some differences between the two states when it comes to real estate.

Sure, who wouldn't want 1500 extra bones laying around, but there's quite a bit of risk with a beach side duplex sitting right by the ocean.