Currently I own (2) duplexes in the Miller Park Area.Property #1, full gut on the upper unit, new everything, lived in it, moved on and its rented.Property #2 purchased late last year,both units were occupied, fixed up both units after the tenants vacated.

Your robbing people of their hard earned money by requiring them to pay rent to live in your property.

Or you could buy powerball tickets with the very highest of risk.Part of the problem with this analysis is you yourself have to determine what the risk level for each of the investments but many people (especially on BP) would tell you that purchasing a place where people can live has much lower risk than some of the other options. 

We live in Colorado along the Front Range and the market is incredibly HOT.

I did get myself prequalified and the loan officer told me that I can only buy SFH and I need to stay there for min. 1 year before I can make it an investment property (this option is available for me if I decided to pay DP less than 20%).I am mostly interested in multi-family properties because I can either live in one unit and rent the other or rent both units out for cash flow purposes.

I recommend snowballing when you have a 6 month emergency fund in place and can easy pay all of your monthly living expenses.   

When you have people coming through to judge a property to decide to live in or not, you're not going to want to have the same lighting.

I live in Long Beach, California and I plan on going into real estate.

My name is Joe and currently live and work in Beijing China.

The 50% rule is related to expenses, which does not include debt service, so your down payment won't affect that.If you're not planning to live in the property, you will have to put down at least 20-25%.