It is a great place to meet new friends and learn about various aspects of real estate and more.Read Beginner’s Guide to help you get started: http://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investingI hope BP helps you achieve your goals!

If that 115 dollars represents what you will be paying as 'rent' you should be very happy and you have more than achieved the house hacking goal. 

Then working backwards towards how I was going to achieve them.

Not to sound cheesy, but I am sure your mentor seeing you take their advice and wisdom, then achieve great success, is going to be the greatest gift to them.

I’m stoked to hear there are actual people successfully achieving house hacking in this market.

You will have a tough time achieving any sort of cash flow as prices are just sky high right now. 

That is how I started and with a great team behind me, strong focus, and clarity, with a little luck, I was able to achieve financial freedom in 3 years before I separated from the military. 

Set up keyword alerts to be notified of the topics that interest you: http://www.biggerpockets.com/alertsI hope BP helps you achieve your goals!

You want to install quality, not necessarily "high-end" and not low-end either, but the right materials for the market in which you're operating to achieve both a premium in rent and rentability.

Make sure to do proper due diligence (get a home inspection report, termite report, roof report) and get a clear idea of what the costs will be to make repairs to achieve a realistic ARV (after repair value).