For me, the key to my success has been or is still, networking and gaining the trust of ACTIVE investors to work with, share information with.

For me, the key to my success has been or is still, networking and gaining the trust of ACTIVE investors to work with, share information with.

Don't invest more than you can gain back in rent for that area.

I am a finance professional and my goals in the first 12-18 months are to educate myself in this field and gain the confidence to get into buy and hold residential real estate investing-- at least that is what I think I should be doing (for now). 

Relating to people is critical to gaining trust.

When you gain some equity, you can refinance the VA loan into a conventional and go purchase a new owner occupied property using you VA benefit. 

More tenants to deal with, more items to break/repair in the quad then the duplex.So for me to choose the quad I would desire it to have close to twice the benefit of the duplex (i.e. twice as much cash flow and/or twice as much equity gain). 

. :)One more question - I understand that I can write off losses from one of the property against gains from another rental property.

Hold 2 years, 1031 out, and defer all gains.

I also purchased some bank notes several years ago and got a great rate on them, right up until the bank exercised their right to re-purchase them (as per the small print) and I got hit with capital gains that year as well as scrambling to find somewhere else to put the funds.