Still a great market, as Charlotte is in its teen age years here.

I'm a mom of 2 teen girls, close to college age, with an apprehensive but patient husband.

Or is it just because it sounds sexy and people say you should?

The initial cap rates I get are a 'non-sexy' 4-6%, which most on BP would criticize.  

While flipping is the hot and sexy passion of mine, I do want to also get into house hacking to improve my monthly expenses.

When we resell and calculate the annual IRR it's usually pretty phenomenal.The other (safer but not so sexy) exit strategy is that as the value of the property increases, we could change the strategy to a fixed income weolse by getting a loan from the bank that is based on the new higher valuation and would allow us to repay the jeonse tenant and get a weolse tenant in there.

Welcome.One quick thing I'll let you know about that is unique to us veterans from my POV as a lender...Most REI use FHA to "house hack," but run up against a problem wherein they can only have one FHA loan at a time.In your case as a veteran trying to keep money in your pocket, know that you can have more than one VA loan at a time depending on total loan balances.On top of that, you can also have one FHA mortgage.That works out to 2-3 homes in sexy financing requiring that requires minimal down payments.

Maybe more; up to the high-teens.

Rentals not as sexy but can be a great approach,    IF YOU USE A PROPERTY manager.  

My target was to sell for over $600k and hit as high as $650, but the agent had pointed out that buyers in my area are not young professionals looking to move to the suburbs, but older folks with kids/teens just looking to get a piece of the market.