Single family homes range from $300k to $1m plus.

I did it privately, not telling friends/family.

Pros of RE:- leverage (can house hack and put 3.5% down FHA, 5% or 10% down conventional loan if you live in one of the units, 2 to 4 unit or buy single family, live in it and rent out each room and buy a $500,000 or $1 million asset).

A cheap place to get to and stay, with good weather and plenty to do, especially for spouses/family that may be less interested in real estate. 

Generally, there are some programs for foreign nationals that are 25% for a single family rental and 30% for a 2-4 unit.  

So if the house is worth 300k and you owe 200k then most you could pull out would be 40k (minus costs) and it would be a second mortgage most likely which would be expensive. 7.5-9.5% likely.But, you can put as little as 15% down for a conventional loan on a single family.

It doesn't tell you anything about how timely they are with payments or if they've violated the lease. sometimes just seeing the state of their vehicle will give you a clue..Some family friends taught me this.

I agree that 1-4 unit properties are a different ballgame, but within my portfolio, I have a 4-unit property insured for $715K—the same amount as one of my single-family rentals.

But he did take a loss that set his family back quite a bit, caused a lot of stress in his marriage, prevented them from being able to buy the new home his wife wanted with the right number of bedrooms for his kids, set him back years in saving for retirement and buying investment properties that could have made him money instead of losing money, etc.

I specialize in small multifamily properties and house hacking working alongside BiggerPockets podcast guest Andrew Freed to help investors find high-performing deals in Central MA.My Background:  - Started in late 2019 I utilized an FHA loan to get my first 3 family property in Fitchburg, spent about a year fixing it up and soon after I refinanced.