Bob makes a valid point, especially if your net worth is below half a million dollars; there might not be much worth protecting.

Investment Info:

Other commercial investment investment.

Purchase price: $850,000

Cash invested: $3,200,000

Want to see what buying an old abandoned grocery store for $850k, and converting it to a Cl...

One is worth $300k+ and I operate it as a STR.

To read previous developments refer to my former post: Previous Fayetteville BP PostFayetteville's in City schools that are worth mentioning are Fayetteville Tech Community College, Fayetteville State University, and Methodist University. 

Once you figure that out, then you will know if it is worth it.

so most people will have to be as leveraged as possible to scale (at the beginning). as in, keep your LTV high and focus on buying 'as much' ($$) RE as possible. this is if you're doing a pretty run of the mill REI strategy like buy and hold. i came across an interesting guideline once: if you could sell today and net 7x+ your annual true net cashflow, you should cash-out/refi, or sell/1031. think of it this way: if your portfolio in a year is worth 1m market value, and you owe 600k, and have a lender that will do a portfolio loan at 80% ltv, you could cashout refi and get 200k to play with (minus closing costs). when you compare the now-lower cashflow from the existing portfolio (higher LTV & maybe different rate), to what you can do with 200k cash, THAT'S where it gets fun. maybe you lose 1k/mo in cashflow on the original portfolio (literally just made up a number, idk), but you can gain 2500/mo in cashflow with that 200k.. then doing the cashout/refi earned you a net increase in your monthly profit of 1500/mo, plus you're getting debt paydown and appreciation on "more" real estate, probably getting bigger tax benefits, etc.

There is some fees to start like applying for your license , pay taxes, etc but it still seems worth it.  

If it's the former, still househack unless you're investing in one of the better growing areas that you anticipate large growth in and can view yourself as a speculator. 

My first issue is I live in a HCOL area (NY) and investing locally seems like numbers are not worth it.

Typical deal is to buy a property for $2-3 million, put $1-2 million into it, all in for $3-5 million, stabilized asset is worth $13-17 million.