Newb looking for insights/recommendations

[Rutendo Chikuku]

Hello BP community!

It’s great to be here. Listened to the podcast for the first time two days ago and haven’t been able to stop :)

I’ve been wanting to get into RE for a few years now. I had a significant down payment saved in 2020 to buy my first home. But life happened and had some medical events that had me take significant time off work. But grateful I had that money so I didn’t have to worry about covering medical/living expenses. 

Now starting over at 35 yo sometimes feels like I'm a bit behind. I recently moved to Laredo TX and have a good W2 gig and living with family. Local RE scene doesn't seem robust in Laredo so was looking to invest in San Antonio or Austin. I've been listening to Robuilt talk about the STR space for a couple months now and thought Austin might be good but have been reading on the forum that it's saturated? And that the city of Austin is cracking down on STR? And might be hard to manage from 4hours away?

Then I thought of doing a house hack in San Antonio because I could be owner occupied and get in for 3.5%. 
Do I have to be physically occupying or is owner occupied on paper? 3.5% I have rn but conventional 20% on say a 300k property will take me about 18mos to save. Thoughts?
Also unsure if I should look into other formats like MTR or LTR. 

Any thoughts/insights/advice on how to think about planning next steps would be appreciated!

Thank you

Rutendo