Again, in my opinion, if you don't know that, you shouldn't be playing this game.

Think of this as a long term investment, if you continue to invest you are able to dollar cost average and it wouldn't matter much at what price you are buying the properties.

If they don't exercise their option, the lease continues as normal until the end of the 24 month term.3.

But don't do it if you're looking to simply earn a return on your money; you're house-hacking to make your cost to ante up to buy into the market less than the alternatives of either not playing or buying elsewhere with a higher ROI but still paying a variable rent for your own personal residence.My goals are to play for cash flow and ROI.

Add value each time and the progression can continue.

Not all lenders are into this kind of play, and you would want to make sure you could get your cash back after completing the value add.

So I would like to offer a perspective that with every PCS you ought to buy a new property and continue that, so that the day you do leave you have the option to liquidate from all those states and consolidate your funds.

It sounds like non-intuitively, you are better off continuing to rent and using your funds in friendlier markets.

After my first property, I don't think I'll need to continue to use the VA loan which will then open me up to more possibilities. 

Trying to decide whether it’s a smarter move for us to buy a small house/condo in our area to house hack (and eventually rent/sell when we likely move in a few years) or continue to rent because of the very high prices in our area and invest out of state.