Welcome Ray,I would recommend the ultimate guide to real estate investing by Brandon Turner.

The next option I thought of was buying a rental property with money I have saved up, renting that property and using its cash flow to cover the rest of my dads mortgage.

Kev Kevin:We'll see if we can get @Thomas S. here to provide guidance on navigating Ontario's LTB to save you time, money and some degree of frustration.However, the general rule of one lease, one payment applies here.  

I'll save you a wall of text unless if you ask for it ;)

@Ivan WongSet your alerts on BP and start saving your cash.  

For those people SAVING less than 30K per year... rentals or turnkey rentals are the way to go at least until you have a good knowledge and cashflow base of a couple thousand every month.

.- 30 yr am.If you can identify which 1 or 2 you want to give up, and can be crystal clear when Dialing for Dollars, it'll likely save you a bunch of time.

We need to stick to this timeline in order to save on construction costs as we will order the prefab unit concurrent with another "spec" cabin that my partners and the LLC are putting on the lot next door. 

My long term goal is to 1031 exchange a portfolio of residential investment properties (ideally all multiplexes, but probably some 1-2%/mo sfrs) into a larger commercial property, ideally 15+ units, with a much more hands off operation. with that in mind, would it be better for me to save up for a larger down payment and never live in my properties, only manage from within 50-75miles (my Dallas proper neighborhood is NOT in my current budget right now) or would it be okay to #HOUSEHACK my first one and then househack a second one in 18-24months, etc. anyone go down this path before that can offer some advice?

Just sell and move on.While I certainly want to make money on this home, my ultimate goal is to NOT have it cost me money to hold, while keeping it as part of a diversified investment portfolio.Did I leave anything critical out of the equation?