Eventually the protection gets more complex and you worry as much about how much you pay in taxes as you do about where the money comes from to replace a roof.When you were a teen you drove a 20 year old car that you had to fix every other week with a shaky battery and not great tires. 

I still get cash flow - maybe less than if I bought for pure cash flow - but I've tripled my actual cash invested.

It is pure logic and common sense honestly, I promise you.So..I do not do any online ads or marketing for my real estate investing company.Tell me gurlfriend.. what do you do when you want to bake an apple pie?

I earn about $130k gross and of that about $100k is pure cash flow. 

this sounds like a bad situation.My suggestion is to start with looking at this from a pure investment scenario first (where both units are rented), and if the numbers work (I seriously doubt the do) then look at it from a owner occupied angle.

Keeping it purely as a financial discussion, not political one, all that matters is more specific questions like rent control, building regulations, rate of appreciation, population increase etc.

From a pure business point of view, your decision will come down to comparing an ACCURATE ROI on this property to:1) Selling and reinvesting in another property for higher ROI.

I agree with Jay, the Oregon Coast is not for pure investors.

I would be in charge of running the project, construction, all costs, I would float the project.Once the first unit is completed we would put financing on it and the proceeds would then fund subsequent phases, enabling us to progress through the project over a multi-year timeline, likely spanning 3-5 years.Estimated my construction cost would be 350,000 per building (pure cost no profits).

This site is great, but sometimes the emphasis on cash flow, cap rates, cash-on-cash misses the point that there are other goals with real estate than purely squeezing the most money out of it.Good luck!