It’s a great way to grow faster.HELOC or Equity Tapping: If you have equity in another property, using a HELOC or cash-out refinance could help cover the down payment without affecting your DTI as much.Seller Financing or Creative Deals: Look for sellers willing to finance directly, which bypasses traditional mortgage qualification hurdles.Scaling quickly often involves combining strategies—play around with what works best for your goals.

While this is a great and highly motivating goal, most people are either clueless or incorrect in their belief as to what is required to obtain this “lifestyle”.Understanding of the “how to” get there is further obscured by the misleading, and often patently false “pathways” sold by real estate educational MARKETING companies as workshops, upsold to association memberships, upsold to mentorships.

It could provide more cash flow but your leverage would still be less due to the total value of that property compared to the 4plex3) Is there an easy way to understand what price range I should stick to in my area, and should I focus on the best market or focus on the best price for properties? 

I don't know the Baltimore market but have a friend who is a very savvy investor there and maybe he would do some coaching to help you understand which way is up.

That is the true value of participating in things like this that are a bit more involved. 

Quote from @Sri Reddy: I am a newbie to real estate investing and looking for guidance from the teams here to understand the sources from where we can find any small retail spaces to buy.

I don’t want much if any involvement because I’ll be doing other things.  

Buffalo is a great place to invest, but understanding that neighborhoods change extremely quickly is paramount to your success.

But from my understanding, the captial gains exclusion has two main criterias - you must have owned the home in the last 2 to 5 years and must have lived in the home in the last 2 to 5 years. 

There's many other options in real estate such as syndication and note investing depending on your level of involvement.