I am currently in the process of building a team and working with agents to fully understand my local market and 'hot spots' in my area.With the resources (credit, cash, income to debt ratio) i have, I plan to start with a property to occupy and renovate for the mandatory time some programs state to classify as owner occupied, then depending on the market rent or sell in hopes to gain the capital I need to really start my investing career.

Dan is spot on with his options.

Pex instead of copperAlso often times you can put up lighting around the exterior of the property and spot light the front of the property.

Recently their stock price has dropped by over 75% and their credit rating was reduced from BBB to B- by Fitch Ratings.

You definitely don't want to use a straight JV for this because you'll quickly run into securities concerns if you want to open your operation up to a wide array of investors; which I'm assuming you will.From the context of your post I think setting up a series LLC with each series buying a block of properties would probably be something worth investigating.David's post is spot-on about fees.

Ok so one is starting out and looking at properties around 100k. What does a good multi family house look like or go for?

Michaela's comment is spot on: if she's been a good tenant, you might try a one paragraph lease change memorandum that you both sign to better align her payments with her paycheck.

So for paying an extra 14.5k over the period I would wind up 28k better off so actually 28k-14.5=13.5k better.Other considerationsI realize that by using a 401k loan I could potentially miss out on the gains that the 21k would have seen in stock market.

On the other hand, another one of my family members has hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in a checking account because he's scared to invest in the stock market.In the end, everyone is different and money isn't always the driver of one's decisions.

absolutely right, everything @Jon K. said below is spot on!