I was stuck in that same mindset for close to a year and I finally made the choice to expand my reach and start investing 30 miles away from the hot zone.

BP has two books that provide an end-to-end blueprint for flipping houses (both highly popular on Amazon.com): BiggerPockets Presents: The Book on Flipping Houses Full disclosure: I'm the author of the books.

You made a great choice to join the community here at BiggerPockets.

Your choice.

Have owned a long time and the area has taken off in popularity.

That will give insight into possible choices.

You have to accept that when the tenants call and say "the toilet is backing up into the bathtub" you have no choice but to deal with it ASAP.

However, I think I don't have much choice in this situation.

Brianna - Thanks for replying, this makes me feel a lot better about my choice to go with a multi-unit via FHA loan.

The current state tax records only have the improvemnents listed as 16k dollars (which is way undervalued).I plan on completing the strucure prior to renting (I have no choice the county wont give me occupancy permit until all work is done).