YOU get to decide where you want to invest, and there are investor friendly agents all over BiggerPockets and each and every major market in this country. 

A good place to start your search if you're not sure what area of the country you want to invest in• BiggerPockets Deal Finder (on market)- once you have an area or two in mind this is like using zillow on steroids because it has investor specific filters and does some of the analysis for you for example you can filter by rental yield and it will also show you homes that analysis shows are underpriced for their market• BiggerPockets Deal Finder (off market) - Maybe not best for your first deal based on your description of your current status and goals but helpful if in the future you want something that you can force appreciation, most of these homes are in foreclosure • BiggerPockets Calculators - as a BP free member you get up to 5 uses of the calculators free every year, as a pro member you get unlimited uses of all the calculators, and you can save each analysis you run so you don't have to come back and redo it every time.

There is also a much larger inventory of rentals for a prospective resident to look at, a few years back we were in the 3ks for vacants and this year bumping up near 5k during the peak season (in my opinion probably due to the low entry price point for investors compared to the rest of the country as well as low interest rates on loans for folks moving out of their homes).

Are you local to that area of the country, or how did you decide to look there specifically?

Now, if you're traveling out of the country you will (typically) still have a place of residence here so that shouldn't be a problem.That being said, I'm pretty sure each lender has a requirement for what percentage of the year you need to be actually living in the property for it to qualify as your residence.

You could house hack a few Cleveland multifamily properties, then make your way to Columbus, which is one of the top real estate markets in the country. 

. - The driveway and front entry path does need some work.

The only reason I’m even on this path is because God put me here and my friend invited me onto her acquisition team!

Yes, I think, like a lot of topics that get passed around real estate circles (like 0 down physician loans...which I have never ever seen one actually close haha) there are these mythical products that people don't realize may only exist at one small bank in one small corner of the country and not actually be available to most.

. - You may be surprised to know that many countries outside US speak extremely fluent English and can handle customer service better than most.