Quote from @Min Zhang: Investment Info:Single-family residence fix & flip investment in Columbus.

It’s also worth considering a multi-family property for your first deal since it can help with cash flow.

I buy my STR's for fun so that I have cool places I want to go to for my family that pay for themselves and make some money.

I'd recommend looking at costs. your build cost is going to be well over other homes because of the fixed costs like slab, Hvac, roof, etc. check the market drivers and weight the benefits of short term versus long term. long term is no furniture and help pays mortgage but at this size it doesn't really cover everything. we didn't find a lot of economies of scale in single family detached. can you build more than one unit?

As I take in as much content as possible from listening to the Rookie Real Estate podcast, I feel drawn to building multi-families and renting them out.

You are not going to buy land and put in a mobile home and the lender in 6 months will consider it a single family home.

I'm considering buying a small single family home near a hospital in the Midwest to turn into a MTR, and trying to decide if it's worth the investment to furnish vs. going straight to LTR.

A cheap place to get to and stay, with good weather and plenty to do, especially for spouses/family that may be less interested in real estate. 

So if the house is worth 300k and you owe 200k then most you could pull out would be 40k (minus costs) and it would be a second mortgage most likely which would be expensive. 7.5-9.5% likely.But, you can put as little as 15% down for a conventional loan on a single family.

Quote from @Michael Johnson: Investment Info:Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.