.- My goal is to follow Scott Trench's ideas in Set for Life and hopefully rent a room for under $1200/month to save some extra cash and use it along with my current savings to buy and house hack a duplex/triplex/fourplex in 4-12 months in the Oakland/Emeryville area.- I consider myself very handy since I have renovated my entire house 99% by myself and pulled permits. 

I’ll take an extra $250 a month in exchange for the drama of being a landlord if I don’t have to put much of my own money down.

Do you have some extra funds that you could reinvest and rebuild?

So for people who are in this higher income situation it would be better for them to take LPMI (lender paid MI) which is in essence a bit of a higher rate in order to not pay monthly MI because this particular person could write off the extra interest and typically pay less than what monthly MI would "have," been in lieu of the LPMI option.For smart investors who buy undermarket value and fix up, it may be best to .....

Anyone having success with Facebook ads with an investor Carrot website?  

                     $220 Vacancy/minor repairs/maintenance                    $220 a month for water/sewer/trash/landscape/snow (actual should be way less)                     $1000 debt serviceNET loss of $160 a month      The cash flow is terrible of course, but that is mainly from the outsized taxes which was from what I can tell from tax records an extra school levy, total taxes for 2016 were  $2341 on same valuation.

My Dad likes to buy these types of properties and turn them into rentals to collect the extra cash flow from the non-conforming units ... double bonus if it is in an area with college rentals (that tend to rent by the room) or airbnb.

Renters defaulted in mass creating loss's for undercapitalized landlords who lost homes in droves.. it all added up. 

If you're in a very competitive market you may want to get the house staged (filled with furniture) for marketing purposes.If you must list it in such a way as to disclose the address (for example you list it with an agent as a rental) please spend the extra $15-20 bucks to install a simplisafe alarm system: this is an inexpensive alarm system that works over 3G cellular networks.

My guess is that your "forever home" will NOT be any easier to buy in 8 years than just saving EVERY extra dollar you can in the meantime.