Hello Ben,I love your idea of house hacking your primary residence to rent out the basement and start earning some income! 

I'd like to mention that if I make the upgrades aside from the two halves of the duplex, I have the space to close off the living room area on my side, which is one of the additions and make it into a short term rental with it's own parking and walkway along with sufficient enough space in the back yard to make a small in-law quarters/tiny home as well with it's secured fence, parking and walkway.My question is: Do I take the risk, invest in the duplex I will own someday with my hard earned liquid cash, expand and create the two short rentals on the property?

I don't even get asked about my credit or about my net worth, earning, etc. 

Personally I believe that CA rental portfolio investing as a start comes mostly when you have a day job earning 150k/yr, and along the road have the ability to build and scale fast for you to have enough to replace the 150k, it is a lot of work and you will just be buying yourself out of a secured job to an unsecured job.

I've read a bit on how its harder to obtain financing as a 1099 employee vs a W2 and how lenders typically want to see at least 2 years of earnings before they consider lending you out a loan.

The market is cooling and this home may be worth 10% less by the time you try to sell it which would put you under water.If you want to invest wisely, increase your earnings, live on a budget, sacrifice, save up, and put your own money in.

It’s difficult (at least for me) to get a loan or finance a home with my own capital so through wholesaling my goal is to learn how to evaluate properties and create relationships with people in my market first while ideally earning capital for future investment strategies.

In commercial construction, everyone does "side work"  in residential construction and are willing to earn extra cash on the side; even my commercial architect that i'm using is doing this work for me on the side. 

I also own a real estate sales team in which I'm earning between $400k and I expect to make around $800k or more this year.I am looking for a bank who will finance these properties moving forward and 10 to 15 percent down or less.

Although we are attempting to learn this game and go through the process, one of the properties we have purchased, has peaked another investors interest in the market.