hi everyone, this is my first time posting to bigger pocketsi am an airline pilot in my mid 30s and looking to create a new life for my wife and myself and our baby on the way. i have dove deep on BP and been scouring the bookstore and the podcasts and learning as much as i can about investing in real estate. we currently live in a 1b/1ba home we own, and no longer owe any debt. i bought it for $120k in 2015 with 2br/1ba, met my wife the next year, she moved in and we gutted it and rehabbed it ourselves (aside from some structural flooring stuff and the final electric and water connections) and blew the tiny bathroom out into the adjacent bedroom, making the house a 1br/1ba. we did all the framing and flooring, paint and drywall and fixtures ourselves. we plan to add an additional bedroom or two, and possibly another bathroom, in the unfinished attic at some point. i was granted a HELOC for $120,000 with my local bank after it got reappraised a month ago at $163,000. i think we spent around $25,000 on the rehab so i'm feeling pretty darn happy about the situation. obviously the covid exodus from boston and new york have pumped real estate prices but we dont really plan on selling any time soon; but possibly renting it out if i get relocated for work.i am trying to find my first investment deal, and my wife and i have narrowed down our plan to aim for a rental with cosmetic rehab and solid tenant base. we thought about house hacking. i'm not sure of where i'll be sent next with work, but i will be sent somewhere else soon. our local market (vermont) is not very landlord friendly so we are looking at long distance, self-sufficient rental as our first investment. i am leaning toward student rentals, and after searching and comparing prices and stuff we have chosen to focus on a few different college town markets in the TN, KY, WV region. i have found a property i think might fit. its a triplex with three 1br/1ba units and off street parking, split utilities, w/d in each unit, located a half block from campus. it seems in decent shape, its been on the market over 200 days, and is listed at $190,000 in a market i believe i can ask at least $750 per unit for rent, which would bring my cash flow to near $1000/mo if i used the calculator correctly.what next??

You can buy a duplex with less down and live in half and rent the other half.

About the best you'll get is if you hold the parcel a year and then sell the one half and pay capital gains and use post tax dollars to pay off the other half.  

For example, if for 3 years out of 10 you rented out one half, do you only get 3/20'ths of the exclusion.

At 1/8 share, that's about a 45 days or a month and a half max factoring in 365 days in a year.

I will have enough for maybe half down but don't want to use that unless needed. 

Not trying to break any rules, just see what the options are :-) An example would be that years ago we 'flipped a lot' where we each put in half the money but it was all done in their name.

Originally that’s what my friend wants but we negotiated I come in with at least half.

I wish we could pin your answer to the top of about half the posts on BP.

Since you can save half of a down payment, I would encourage you to do that.