Hopefully your skill set and talent and grit will get you there at some point.

Some agents have good negotiation skills (after all, they do it for a living) and they give you a buffer to the other side's craziness. 

agree to the extent you can house hack  4 plex in your area with FHA loan you get in with minimal down you live there a year.. you keep your powder dry.with your skills I would look for value add .. buy one do the work  then refi. don't go spending all your cash.. keep no consumer debt and keep collecting cash.. real estate will always be here.. it always has.. be selective and methodical and in a few decades you will be smiling.

Way back in 2006 I started looking at real-estate investing as a good investment but I'm in the financial sector, son of a banker, I knew that land lording took some carpentry skills I just did not have.

Her cut in skills were on point, very impressed.

As a landlord your bread and butter is being able to do what you're doing right now over and over again, so whatever doesn't fit into that mold can and will eventually be a roadblock to greater success.A few issues to consider:Are the tenants skilled at maintenance?

Costs can vary a lot depending on level of finish, what community you are building in (fees can vary a lot) etc but for purposes of a very broad brush I'd use $120/SF plus soft costs (architect, engineer, survey, legal etc at another 15% over hard construction plus land, plus site work. 

I'm as green as they come as it relates to real estate investing, but I'm am absolute expert at starting and running businesses into the ground.However, over the years, I've trained into my muscle memory a set of skills that make it VERY difficult for me to continue to blow wads of cash on any "idea."  

., screening tenants is a skill you definitely need to develop. 

Let me know Purchase price - $160,000Construction cost per home - $175,000 (about $100/SF is the goal)Total cost (land + construction) - $510,000Sell price per home - $344,000Profit after soft costs, contractor fee, demo, site work, commissions, etc – 50k per house for a total of 100k profitFinancing with a 10% down 18 month IO construction loanPro forma