Now, that meetup is in South County, on the MO side, but brings in folks from Belleville, Fairview, Collinsville, Cahokia, and all over the St Louis area.Now, there is a monthly GRID meetup in Edwardsville that brings in folks from the metro-east, as well.Generally, going to any real estate meetups in the St Louis area will find you someone who also invests in Belleville.I also invest in Cahokia, John.

Seems like you have some solid plans in place—now the question is, which one to tackle first?

At least it's out in the open now.

I’m ready to buy mi first duplex/triplex for a house hack and wanted to go the FHA loan route strictly for the low down payment of 3.5% I’ve been self employed for exactly 1 year now, but the issue I’m running into is that every lender I have talked to (over 9 lenders now) have told me I need to have at least 2 years of self employment in order to get an FHA loan or any loan that requires under 10% down (even if I made good money my first year of self employment) I have 780+ credit score, no debt, no loans, no monthly payments on anything.

Now is the time to subtract the debt service and calculate your cash on cash return.

Now we're seeing major disasters in densely populated areas and insurance companies can't maintain their profit margins.

Just keep doing the same thing that is working for you now. 

My 14 year old now makes over $100/month passive income from her % owned and my 10 year old is at like $65/month.In this process we are building their interest in real estate, teaching them the value of putting their money to work for them, and all the while growing our investment if we need it for their college money some day! 

I am now looking to buy my second rental but I have been looking at single families because the deals seam to be decent. the prices are surprisingly cheap over there for a single family averaging about 200k.

You might be able to do better on the rate, which would make the figures a little more favorable.