Thanks for any thoughts on this!  

Welcome to the group @Ryan Napman.

At this stage, I am interested in house hacking, short-term rentals, and residential assisted living (though I hope to continue to learn more about other opportunities as well).I appreciate this community and the opportunity to learn from others.

This is a great place to learn and to connect with people so take advantage of all the great resources.

It depends on where you want to live, income, personality, and other factors.You could buy a large home and rent out the individual rooms to cover expenses, but this comes with problems.

@Chris Kay to learn to properly DIY manage you have two basic options:1) Trial & fire on your own, hopefully not making a major mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars.- Once your time is more impotant to you then the cost of a PMC, you can hire one.2) Hire a PMC to guide you on your first rental and learn from their expertise.- You can buy additional properties and DIY manage those, perhaps leaning on the PMC for any issues you're not sure how to handle on your own.Good luck:)

Hey brother, first off, I'm very sorry to hear about your wife, prayers and blessings from my family to yours. 

Germantown has plenty of opportunities, especially if you keep an eye on areas with improving infrastructure or schools.

As a newbie, I’d love to connect with local investors and agents to learn more about the area and refine my plan.

It may be beneficial to link up with an established wholesaler and pay them to mentor you or work for them and learn.