The issue I am having is narrowing it down.

Knoxville, Maryville, and Chattanooga are our narrowed down list for future destination.

It might help if you narrowed down whether your focus was on flipping or renting out the property because that would certainly affect how you finish out the remodel, your scope of work, and ultimately your budget. 

HUD yes section 8 yes  housing authorities run by cities yes.but who knows whats the jurisdiction what city and state.. maybe if you post those details someone can acutally answer you..right now with your post there are 50 states to choose from and a million cities need to narrow it down if you want any constructive feedback  :) 

I am primarily interested in multifamily, but don't want to waste what I have if I can narrow down some single family opportunities. 

You will need to learn about the different real estate strategies there are and narrow it down to the one that you think best suits you.

A great place to start plugging in criteria and practicing narrowing down the list.

It will expose you to numerous ideas about money and real estate and you can begin to narrow down what kind of investor you are wanting to be and which strategy you want to take.

Once you narrow down your goals and strategy (if you haven't already), it gets easier to weed out a lot of the extraneous information.  

I would pick a general area of the country to focus on first and start to narrow it as you do your research.