Even if it looks like I'm making great profit each month on rentals (anywhere from $200-400 after putting away 15% into savings and 8% on management) and yet the ROI is below 8% and our realtor said it needs to always be at least 8%.

The cash is from retirement accounts.The $52,000 should return ~13.6% assuming 10% vacancy and 10% maintenance.

I guess how good the deal is matters less when you are looking to house hack because you will be saving the money you'd have spent giving to rent and instead building equity into your property (as well as appreciation and cash flow hopefully). 

@Ari Bildner about the only change I'd suggest is to up your Vacancy to 8% since that'll give you about a month's rent saved up each year (1/12 = 8.33%)

I also have 20k saved and have brought In about 1300 this month with AirBnB.

@Laila Ea Looks like several of your expenses are under-estimated, vacancy should be about 8% to give you 1 month of rent saved up each year, CapX of 5% seems low, typically that would be around 10%, and management of 4% is definitely low, usually companies charge you around 10%.

So options 2 or 3 are appealing in that sense, but I am trying to figure out if either of those would make sense given that the monthly payment would go from $1,450 to probably around $3K or more, making it a) hard to afford and b) even harder to save/grow our portfolio.

Point is, how much would I realistically need to save up to acquire my first rental property?

PITI: $1,200.5% Down Payment of $163,000 Purchase Price.Property Appraised for $190,000 right out the gate.Originally paid Gas/Water for both units and electric for 1 side, but am in process of switching electric over to new tenant, which should save $140-160/mo.

FHA 3.5% Sales Price Cash After closing fees $305,000.00 $15,000.00 $430,000.00 $127,000.00 Monthly PITI Average 4 Bedroom Rent Realized Rent Savings 2.5 Years Repair Cost $2,500.00 $2,800.00 $9,000.00 $27,500.00 Total Money Invested (Repair Cost+Downpayment)-Rent Savings ROI: Gains from investment-Cost/Cost $33,500.00 280%