An owner wants their rentals rented; lease-up fees encourage the PM to let the rental to go vacant so they can get the fee. 

How can I use that equity to buy a rental property?

We plan to invest in real estate and use rental income as our business’s income stream. 

(I won’t go into actual numbers because who knows what horrid people lurk in the online universe.)

Online research will only get you so far. 

It really is a different animal than either long term or short term rentals so it's best to seek advice from others with experience in this niche.

There is no middle ground with rental property. 

The other units are free to be used as rentals.

My investment property is in upstate NY and I live out of state and am managing myself (via my brother that lives in town), not a house hack, long term rental on both sides.

Rentals create cash flow, and that's what we want as real estate investors, but you need cash on hand for unforeseen circumstances.The AC needs to be replaced, that's $7K to $10K or more depending on the size of the house and if you have one rental, it will eat all your cash flow, same to replace a roof, etc, or if tenant trash the home, you need money to fix it again.To me personally a nice rental portfolio that is healthy consists about 10 units, so if you have an issue with a house the portfolio can cover the repairs and still healthy, but when starting you need to have cash on hand just in caseYes, there are multiple strategies you can use to hack your way to buy your first rental with minimum cash, but I would start wholesaling or fix and flip a few deals to create that cash as fast as possible