Some areas its great, some areas it totally sucks - and within a specific office, some case workers are great, some are misery. 

My concern though is if I try and do the 5% down route to be able to afford it, then I'm still looking at a $4,800 total monthly cost.

I am doing some demo and reconnecting office space to increase the total area.

So if you sell this property for $325k, of which $125k is your mortgage and $200k is equity, you must purchase one or more properties that have a total value of at least $325k AND you have to put at least that $200k in equity back into it.

If you analyze 10 deals a week for a year, you'll have looked at over 500 total deals.

I’m not sure I would make that bet personally.

More than 1,200 home flips were counted in the Metroplex, comprising 7.7% of total home purchases.

Regarding how much you can qualify for, if you have a bank you like I bet they would be happy to help you figure that out.

Appreciation may surprise you and a local credit union here in NC will even do a free online appraisal and totally skip the actual fee based appraisal but charge you a higher insterest rate.

So total four units of 2/1.- Properties are a couple blocks away from our house.