Wheras I may be a newbie to the RE game, I have spent the last 8 months reading and learning and one thing that has stuck out from all the books and YT videos and forum posts is you need multiple streams of income(Rich Dad Poor Dad the 4 quadrants).

Steady stream of tenant pool so renting shouldn't be an issue, especially hot rental market in summer. 

More modern systems support (i) storage of video stream in the cloud with some minimal automated analysis, and/or (ii) remote access of a video livestream, but someone needs to sit and watch for activity. 

It is more along the lines of 1$ interest exp saves you about .28-.32 CENTS    While there is no right way, if you have enough cash to buy a decent income stream with no debt etc- why wouldnt you? 

When a person has the possibility or desire to teach a child how to invest and manage money there is no other type investment that will produce the safe, risk-free, simple and long-term results that real estate investing offers when choosing to invest in the best type of real estate investments.Learning a trade is great advice for many reasons i.e. a real estate investor will be much more successful and earn much more money with real estate when the investor has a good stream of income that can be used both for his living expenses and then to have additional cash to invest.

The issue I'm facing is that I'm beginning to look at properties in the Midwest with a low acquisition cost and rental stream (relative, of course).

Cap rates are simply a function of measuring the value of a stream of income. 

It seems like there should be some bump when I include myself as a tenant, but that essentially takes one of the income streams and I never seem to get much benefit from the multi-family over a single family.

I also provide my investors with a copy of the book - Private Money Lending: Learn how to generate a passive income stream.

I'm looking to Real Estate Investing as a wealth building, retirement enabling second income stream with plenty of help from local team members that will do the heavy lifting after I've selected & financed the opportunities.I'm glad to work with smaller firms, commission-only shops.