I'll be targeting single-family homes with good school ratings that I can purchase at a discount for one reason or another.

I am currently able to save around $2500/month and am wondering what some of your opinions are as far as a route to go for starting off in this area and market.I am either looking to find a duplex and house hack it, or start with finding a good single family deal and live in it for a year while building equity and then move to a duplex and house hack it.

We are now buying a single family for ourselves near by.

I worked alongside professionals as a "helper" With pretty much no construction experience, they put me on the dirty grunt work, cleaning rat poop, removing the old toilets, scrubbing down baseboards, etc. but as I was doing that, I was watching every single thing they did, and pestered them with tons of questions on how to do things and different techniques.

Not a single issue to date and saved a lot of money. 

So unless it has appreciated by a huge amount in the intervening year, you might be able to take most of the proceeds tax-free.https://www.irs.gov/faqs/interest-dividends-other-...https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stepupinbasis...https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/if-you-inh...Otherwise, if you live in it for another few months you could potentially qualify for the Sec 121 exclusion mentioned above ($250k single/ $500k married filing jointly).

A single unit rental has a 59/50 of not losing your money. 

Typically this is only for single family.  

Single-family home sales rose 9.1 percent year-over-year, with 8,108 units sold;Days on Market (DOM) for single-family homes remained unchanged at 48 days;Total property sales increased 8.5 percent, with 9,559 units sold;Total dollar volume jumped 11.4 percent to nearly $2.8 billion;The single-family home median price rose 5.9 percent to $243,500, reaching a July high;The single-family home average price also achieved a July record, rising 2.4 percent to $305,910;Single-family homes months of inventory was at a 4.2-months supply, down fractionally from 4.3 months last July, but nonetheless at the highest level since August 2017;Townhome/condominium sales rose 6.1 percent, with the average price up 6.9 percent to $215,110 and the median price up 9.3 percent to $165,000;Leases of single-family homes fell 1.9 percent with the average rent up 5.6 percent to $1,916;Volume of townhome/condominium leases dropped 6.6 percent with the average rent up 7.7 percent to $1,666.https://www.har.com/content/mls/?

My single family unit is near a college and I rent to college kids.