Lots of folks did and are in this pickle.

That mental switch allowed us to find a great 2-family house-hack opportunity in Bayonne, NJ, and also led me to an amazing career change -- I've been a full-time NJ Realtor for 2.5 years now and have helped many BiggerPockets folks find their first house-hacks -- a good % coming from NYC.  

Here in Colorado Springs and Denver they are called "habitat for humanity" and they get huge slabs from folks renovating.

I just wanted to point out the income on these is based on premium rents PER BED ROOM not per property.. you at least I am thinking you are like the folks that buy homes from me for student rentals.. are pricing by room.. which gives you the large premium.. 

There is something to walking into a room where 95% of the folks in that room are interested in MF syndications (5% are lost, in the wrong room).  

Hang out in these forums and absorb all you can while realizing you are in an area that a lot of folks don't fully understand. 

Note that these folks are super hard on properties though.

And after speaking with a lot of folks at BPCON2024 I’m realizing this is a niche that some of you in the community are very good at, but most of you, like me, know this is a need but don’t have a good solution. 

It's always great to see folks from Long Island diving into the world of real estate investing.

@Nate Shields - I heard the same origin story regarding the Featured Agent program from the sales folks that disappeared.