ORShould we stay put in our paid off home and start investing into pure rentals that require more money down without any cash flow from our current residence?

Buy on terms any way you want, if not living in it...sub2, lease option assignmaster lease for cash flowowner financing Sell on terms with straight lease and pure option, no rent credits, no financing option, put all tenant buyers through RMLOs.Buy as an investor free and clear houses, give terms, charge interest as per the IRS requirements, and rent out til paid off.

You are worried about legal action, pure and simple.

Lastly, having experience in this entire space, the piecemeal approach is more hands-on, you have a higher likely hood of incurring construction over runs "unforeseen" - lets face it most contractors are a tough breed of people to work with, so timelines are not always certain.Anyhow, yes, it can exist, but it requires a ton more work, your time, more room for error, and the pure time cost of money is substantially greater.Just a thought, much luck, great question!

My best advice for potential house hackers is, run the numbers as if you weren't going to live there, and see if the property is still cash flow positive (and by how much).Someday you may want to (or may plan to) move out and make it a purely investment property, and it's good to know in advance whether you will be able to do so and still have the property be cash flow positive.

REIHub is purely accounting.

I wanted to add a little bit more into what I'm thinking..I am trying to avoid everything under 16 units entirely as from my understanding, which Grant Cardone echos, anything less than 16 units doesn't provide the pure cashflow needed to have a property manager as well scale as well as the added risk of few tenants. 

Since I was 'raised' on BP, in a sense, for a year or so before becoming licensed, that purely transactional retail real estate doesn't interest me as much as rolling up my sleeves and getting creative.

@David Mijares, your pre-qualification is for buying your own primary - not purely for investment, right? 

This might be because SFR's are getting too expensive and multi's do better for owner occupant debt to income ratios.Either way, in order to avoid the owner occupant competition (who can always pay more than a pure investment play), you need to be sourcing non-MLS deals.