I was sent an offering memo by a broker selling a multi-family building in an area no reasonable person would even consider affordable housing material yet the marketing materials made a point of emphasis to detail how the property would satisfy the need for affordable housing.

There is no one size fits all answer for this question, market to market, and property to property are all different. 

Purchase price: $35,000 Cash invested: $38,000 Another flip ready in the market. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4467-Sims-St-Columbus-GA-31907/76572533_zpid/

Educate yourself on how to handle marketing, screening, late rent, lease violations, etc.

Unless you are sourcing properties yourself off-market, REI became much more challenging in 2023, and downright brutal since the start of 2024 here.   

You could put most of your funds in the stock market and access them when needed for a HML.

The market is ALWAYS changing but I know at this time, seasoned investors are getting 80% LTV on DSCR in the 6% range and 90% of PP/100% of renovation if total loan does not exceed 75% of ARV for FixNFlip loans. =)  

So they used the actual rented data of these companies to compare what rentals should go for in your market.

I am not sure if I should stay local to my market.

Are you investing in your local market?