Keep the powder dry as the saying goes...

I actually am afraid to leave my day job as my leads my dry up!

You want to stay away from any use like gas stations, auto repair, dry cleaners, etc. that would require environmental remediation.

Although I too believe you could pull the trigger a little sooner on you time line it's important to remember that it's "YOUR" timeline and "YOUR" Vision.Best of Luck and Enjoy your journey!

However, good deals are drying up and I am planning to open myself for some other areas with more attractive price/cash flow properties. 

My wife and I have excellent credit and a significant amount of $ in cash / liquid investments but rather than trigger tax gains by selling stocks, I was hoping to find a hard money lender for the purchase.

I have 70k liquid cash, and want to use a good chunk to put down on a du-triplex, but I'm still trying to learn all the basics before I pull the trigger.  

Keep reading the site/postings and you will definitely learn and pull the trigger.

The exterior walls are stucco and rarely need maintenance due to the dry climate.

Reading the second bullet seems to indicate that as soon as you try to reclaim benefit from a property you had a VA loan on and paid off you trigger this one-time restoration and set yourself up for failure.Does anyone have FIRST-HAND understanding of leveraging their VA loan as a product to continue investing?