I haven't even begun to look for sellers or buys yet.

Buy a quality property, stay away from the hood, rehab it as if you would move in, take your time picking a tenant, you'll be find.

If I were in your position, I would buy a duplex that has potential for value add, fix it up, live in one unit and rent out the other unit as a medium term rental or long term rental.

Nothing beats buying leveraged rentals! 

That way there's a chance it will go on their radar.

We're connected with a lot of relocation networks at Cone and several through BHHS (which I'm affiliated with for buying/selling).

When I did my research for buying my properties in Costa Rica, I had one of the big STR management companies like Evolve analyze my potential profits and I used that info to raise money through bringing on partners to buy the properties. 

Out of state investors can do really well here, but you can also lose a decent chunk of money if you buy wrong.Lots of out of state investors, especially those from California get a little blindsided because everything here is so cheap it all looks like a guaranteed great deal.

If anything just buy motivating buyer lists or VA until you build your own buyers list.

I’m ready to buy mi first duplex/triplex for a house hack and wanted to go the FHA loan route strictly for the low down payment of 3.5% I’ve been self employed for exactly 1 year now, but the issue I’m running into is that every lender I have talked to (over 9 lenders now) have told me I need to have at least 2 years of self employment in order to get an FHA loan or any loan that requires under 10% down (even if I made good money my first year of self employment) I have 780+ credit score, no debt, no loans, no monthly payments on anything.