Hi All,I am currently looking to buy my first investment property, and I believe the owner occupancy method of acquiring rentals to be one of the most feasible methods.

Calculate the loan payment and you profit or cash on cash.Do any of you guys use this method?

This means that we have exhausted all traditional methods of softening a blow of recession.  

I personally would apply both these methods on a non-HOA property over a condo.If you do decide to go the condo route, though, then I'd say consider it more of a live in flip than a long-term buy and hold.

Trade house for 1m property.  

Tenants use about 30% more water and do not generally report leaks.Take 60% of gross rents for a D area with higher evictions and make readies and collection efforts with increased bookkeeping.75,600 X .40 ( 60% costs) = 29,240 NOI29,240 at a 10 cap is a value at 292,400 ( This is optimistic as D areas trade for 12 caps usually).175,000 purchase plus  estimate likely 13k to 14k a unit rehab so about 196,000.

Being in the trades which can be very sensitive to the economy, I'm want to avoid getting too leveraged. 

Say I did this method 5 times and successfully have 5 properties with 200k + my initial capital (110k), what happens from here? 

I'm thinking about adding some value and exiting with a short term hold (3-5yrs) to trade up via 1031.

I'll trade dollars for that peace of mind any day.