I am a father, friend and baseball development coach.  

That's strictly a cashflow mentality since he seldom assumed appreciation.Colorado is experiencing major appreciation, so you could lower your payback standards since your profits would come from appreciation.Finishing the basement: Assuming $15,000 to get an extra $250/month, that's a payback of 60 months or 5 years.

I moved into the single family home, and have the apartment out back rented and my old apartment at the 4 unit rented out, and those two extra income properties cash flows quite well while upgrading my living conditions from a 1 bedroom apt to a single family house.If you're trying to refi out of your FHA to use again, you would need to have at least 20% equity in that property to refi out of the FHA.I love your strategy and as long as you live in the FHA property for a year there is nothing illegal about it.

But I've been trying to justify house hacking, and without using an FHA loan (I'd rather not pay the extra insurance) I'm finding it hard to see the benefits.

Sometimes development can actually be a bad thing. 

The angle lake light rail station is one of the newer stations so I'd be curious if the station will bring in lots of developer $.

You know, the funny thing is, I'm told this seller has been a developer of houses and small multifamilies in the area for many years.

Once my emergency fund is set and my retirement contributions are maxed out, I will happily co-invest in my Funds because that'll be the best place to put my extra money.$100k is a reasonable investment for a JV for those that do that.

So much in fact, that it just so happens that I actually teach a 3-day class specifically on Self Storage Development & Conversions.And since I especially want to toe the line in regards to how much promoting we can & should do on this Bigger Pockets Forum, please PM me if you'd like more info. 

I'm currently a freelance designer, and I have a lot of extra time that I'd love to devote to this.