Quote from @Matthew Posteraro: Me and my wife are aiming to start our real estate investing journey with our first house around June/July in the Lehigh Valley area.

I wouldn't recommend a standard buy and hold rental because you'll have to pay both your HELOC and mortgage on the house. 

When I did my first house hack in Columbus I showed very low income on taxes. 

You could try typing developer on to the search magnifying glass in upper corner.

If it is a high end housing product you may have to use a designer because they have access to some material/finish suppliers that are otherwise unavailable but that tends to only be for the highest end housing deliveries.

Out of these areas, Franklinton and Linden are seeing some of the most developments.

The biggest hurdle I see with arbitrage is developing a pitch to use when approaching landlords, which you can probably do with a little research on BP and ChatGPT.

At that time I will get the house cleaned up and list it on the market and when it sells I've agreed to get reimbursed my costs for reinstatement plus any other costs plus a fee for my efforts.

I first house hacked in Malden when I bought a 2 family.

So I have my house that refinanced in 2020 for a 15yr 2.5% rate and we have about 56k equity.