When I set my expectations to be in alignment with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, these seem onerous.  

From a financial perspective: If you don't have a money partner this will also allow you to align your balance sheet and position yourself to be more lendable for Fannie / Freddie long term debt while you season your first deal for refinance.

If we were to use existing HELOC funds, then it’s just up to how much mortgage rates change in the 6-12 months we’d have to wait to re fi.To your point, if we can do REALLY well on the BRRRR methodology, I’d rather be efficient in terms of aligning with our long term strategy, and it sounds like we might be able to do that if we choose carefully.

This is great and aligns with the ideas I had, so that helps solidify what I was thinking.

Ideally I would like to BRRRR but there are alot more components to it and alot more room for errors especially for a newbie.

Help them see the value-add component (forced appreciation) and how it affects NOI, total return, and cash flow (based on rent post rehab). 

Make sure you have aligned interests because if mortgage broker doesn't get paid until closing you bet they are going to heavily vet any lender to work with otherwise they get nothing for their time invested.These tips are not foolproof but help weed out the fraudsters.

Glad to hear there’s another techie in this forum as well.I’m looking to learn about house hacking, the key components to market properties (for rentals) and how to properly manage multi families.my overall goal is to achieve a 5k cash flow within the next 4 years. 

@Sean StrohYou're the only person who can really answer that question, but it seems that your goals align with long term growth rather than paying off your properties quickly. 

You'll want to make sure their philosophies align with what you're looking for.