Thank you for the info, I am certainly in the intel-gathering phase of my journey and I certainly appreciate the advice.

Typically, getting into the 5-unit range can get overwhelming for people and take up too much of their time.A good real estate focused bookkeeper will save you a lot of time and headaches... especially during tax prep. 

A good PM can save a mediocre property.

Check out this link for more info.

You are making more on that money investing it than you'd save in interest payments.

With this mortgage, that would save me $22,500.

I have 20k saved and plan to use an FHA 203K loan and house hack to net zero/cash flow minimally on my first investment.

maybe you're losing a few hundred in cash every month, but i'd be willing to bet the appreciation, debt paydown, and tax benefits combined are seriously outweighing that. you could look at this like putting the negative cashflow every month into an invisible savings account for the future, like a retirement account. this obviously only works if you can comfortably lose that cash every month. you could also consider not renewing the lease and doing STR or MTR in that property?

The one big downside is that to make her happy I have to keep buying houses.An added benefit is that she qualifies as a real estate professional (per IRS) which saves us a ton in taxes.

I have 90k in cash in a savings account.