Currently, my wife and I are looking to live in a 2 to 4 unit rental investment property in the MA/NH border area.

Brew pubs and border collies on every corner. 

Thats a bit of a broad question because there are a few diff calculations involved but...Spread sheetstake the purchase price write it downtake the repair costs...write it downgross rental income after its repaired...write it downholding costs...write em down ARV write it downConsider how much its going to cost you to buy, fix, and hold...cross reference that to how much you want to pull out in a mortgage afterwards. consider what interest rate you're going to pay.example purchase price - 100krepairs - 50k holding costs (3 mo) - 2k gross rents after repair -1800ARV - 225k say you pull out 70% of the Arv your getting $157.5k so basically cost you next to nothing to docalculate your monthly mortgage payment, all expenses and operating cost say that comes to 1400. try to reverse engineer it, practice on properties you find on the market that need work. get familiar with these types of calculations 

I am in a cross road I’m looking to get my first deal.

Yet I know that if investor A hands-off a deal to investor B that investor B is going to pay investor A in some way.The other area is a cross transaction where 1/2 is off-market contract to be assigned and a realtor represented buyer wants to buy. 

@Nathan Cross thank you for your reply!

@Nathan Cross, yep I've started making connections on FB.Thank you

I'm in OR, you have no clue how tenacious the Cali FTB is in chasing down money.Steve...this statement borders on comical. 

Looking specifically in Hagerstown Maryland In “Hager’s crossing” Thanks!!

I would highly recommend you don't try and pretend to be an owner occupant as the city is cross referencing mortgage data to "catch" people doing this-they are basically going all CSI on STRs right now to shut every single one down that they can.