Questions:-should I stay away from investing in a town home due the common risks (smaller buyer pool, potential HOA issues, large competition etc)?

Before I was planning on buying a house back home earlier in the year and renting it out but instead of dropping a large down payment I could put that money in a few notes for a much better return.

I'm glad I did what I did because it has put me in a position of building my business as a Realtor with my service business to pay the bills in the transition and beginning my investing later this year having watched the market for 8+ years and at least kept my net worth positive with my house appreciation, if not as large a number as it could have been.     

Evaluating the potential of turning a large SFH into a duplex.

Thank you all for the info. we ended up pulling out of the deal due to a large amount of unforseen repairs uncovered during due diligence.

So I’m a relatively new landlord, and I have a property with a basement I consider to be somewhat hazardous (more like a really large crawl space).

Newbie investors and how they bought their first deal, or large multifamily guys like Ken McElroy, Cardone, etc and how they are buying the big stuff?  

I understand you're coming from the standpoint of this being one deal, the first deal, so this might require a large % of your available capital... but what you should think about is when you have the capital you should use it on the first good deal you can find. 

Or find other investments to build on a smaller scale for now.Some jobs are worth keeping in the short run for how much they can pay you now, you save every thing you can and invest it. 

They work on those large erections of steel you see at a petrochemical refinery.