My husband and I deal with this on a daily basis.

I'm not entirely sure the product continues to be developed given their asset tracking still says "coming in 2017" but the site continues to operate so I'm going to reach out to the company to see where things are at and whether there's legitimate concern over the product shutting down. 

Ideally, we could find a brick industrial type building where we could rent the ground level commercially for about the PITI, and live close to rent free above in a loft like space.

I think my ultimate goal would be to own apartment buildings and maybe get into development.

Ideally someone independent and well-connected. 

I've been focusing the money that I would be using for investing to pay off credit cards from school as I graduated 8 - 9 months ago and have been working as a Software Developer ever since.

Hello Rigo, yes ideally the best flip for a newbie or for any investor is one that only needs cosmetic upgrades.  

. :)     I'm an architect by education and practice most of my life, but in recent years have also gotten into real estate acquisition, development and management, both in the USA and here in Shanghai.  

One of the local developers down here (DC) actually purchased the old HSBC tower in downtown and my company helped them with the preconstruction efforts.

Office Building (about 2k sqr ft)Ideally I'd like to rent out the duplex like a normal Duplex, then figure out how to rent out the office building (this would be very new to me).