I'm currently living in the Boston suburbs and looking for a 2 or 3 family BRRRR/house hack within the 495 belt, preferably something close to the commuter rail.

If you are able to go with something simple in the beginning to get a few under your belt, you can change later. 

It's the long game but I think it could be a decent opportunity to get a couple of properties under my belt. 

Hey BP Nation,So I have a few rentals under my belt using the traditional method (with either conventional or FHA financing) by finding deals on the MLS.

I would schedule a maintenance, clean the coils, blower, and give it a tune up since you are flipping.

Once you get a couple under your belt then you could start looking upstate where there can be tremendous deals even on the MLS.

The blower was weak though and not much made it upstairs.

Make sure that you have a plan in place to change the air filters every 3 months to keep your blower motor from burning out.  

I strongly feel the new build approach should be tossed into the "too hard pile" until you get more experience under your belt and also until you can build something more substantial.

Plus, if you decide to do one of the other strategies in the future (such as BRRR'ing or out of state investing), you'll be much more prepared to do it if you have a few HH's under your belt--a ton of the lessons you'll learn from a HH can be used to succeed in other areas of real estate ...in fact, I'd say that a HH should be a necessary prerequisite to the more advanced strategies (like flipping) for most folks!