Well a strategy I have been using with some success is to give a non-refundable DD check straight to the seller for an amount you deem acceptable (aside from the EMD check held at the title company).

This will not be a house hack, just a straight buy to LT rent initially, then possibly convert to a STR if approved by the county.We're looking at SFHs in the $300k-$500k range, so the downpayment will at least $60-$100k.

@Matthew OlszakThanks for the straight forward advice.

Seller financing puts more risk on the seller so this is a key factor to the deal.Don't dive straight into prices and how bad you want to buy it but try to find points to convince him to sell.

I recently completed my first house hack and am now moving forward with searching for and purchasing a SFH or Duplex that will be a straight rental.

Point is, seriously pull out the charts for the median home values over timeline, a reasonable time in market years say 30+ years and it will blow your mind how small those changes actually were, and how much the market keeps snapping right to the steady straight upward trend. 

The flush language in Sec 280A (and the legislative history) makes this clear.Another poster suggested the Morcos case doesn't apply because there was only a single dwelling unit and not two dwelling units. 

@Carlos Ptriawan Agree with your comments, I haven't seen any MFR with workable numbers in markets I like or I'd have gone straight to that.

Anyway there are so many more reasons to investing than just straight cash flow (though IMO you should never buy a property that doesn't at least break even after all of your costs).

I was curious if any multi-property land lords have a good system (or suggested products) for keeping expenses straight and annotated throughout the year for their different properties.I have separate LLCs and bank accounts for each property, however when I go to export and classify most of my expenses for the year, I'm finding that I forget what some unlabeled (or hard to decipher) expenses were, and thus may be classifying them wrong.I'm looking for something like Quickbooks, but that can handle multiple LLCs/Bank accounts, because as I understand Quickbooks requires different user names for different businesses.Note: I have tried Stessa (and honestly, what it does is what I'm looking for....) but because I use smaller regional banks, the connects to the accounts have troubles several times a month, and I end up having to go back and manually import transactions anyway, so it ends up taking more time than it saves me.Thanks!