If you would typically bid the project at $60k, with $30k being real costs, then you could be profiting $30k for the same job, but without having to float the costs for an indefinite amount of time.  

If you can afford the mortgage indefinitely even if the rooms were not rented and/or you can live mortgage free or close to it by renting all the rooms, then it's probably not a bad deal and you should go for it!  

Primarily because they work with the 1031 exchange which will allow you to indefinitely defer all of the tax and depreciation recapture that you've worked so hard for.

In the end I went with out of state single and multi family properties that needed little to no work upon purchase with the intent to hold indefinitely so i would have an additional source of income when I ultimately retire.   

Does anyone really think that governments are going to send money or bail out (i) the stock market, (ii) tenants, (iii) millions of unemployed people, (iv) whole economic sectors (airlines, carmakers, oil companies..) indefinitely, over and over? 

Caveat to ^^ - Don't walk away from a house-hack  that would work well because you haven't refinanced yet, and don't wait indefinitely to refinance until you find the ideal house-hack.

With rentals the work continues in definitely. 

If you rent back indefinitely, it's kind of like owning it.Eventually it becomes so "old and cold" that you could probably get B of A to approve a sale back to you.

I'd hate to rent myself indefinitely if there is inflation in the future.

The answer is “Yes”...so long as income tax benefits are not altered or enhanced in the process.4 As we’ve discussed in other chapters, federal lending regulations fully authorize the creation of inter vivos trusts of all types, requiring only that the borrower creating such a trust remain “A” beneficiary (a very important indefinite article, that “a”).