After recent significant increases in property taxes, homeowners insurance, utility costs, supply costs, maintenance costs, and construction costs the margins are thinner to a significant degree.

Just like @Jason Wray said, finding a good agent or already knowing one is your best bet.

We've talked to a few lenders and since this will be our first ground up construction project, they told us that we need to have someone with ground up build experience to also be loan with us.

I feel it's a bit unfair and frankly I am not going to charge the tenant anymore than what the place is worth market rate because of its location and he is a great tenant (pays on time, keeps the place clean, communicative etc) I feel like i should even give him a break because he said he couldn't even be home since there was construction all summer due to building maintenance repairs. 

-CJ Johnson Life House Design and Construction San Diego, CA 

I run a call center for Real Estate where we call for investors and I can tell ya, your best bet with such limited time is cold calling targeted lists (high equity within your buy box) for 3-4 hrs every day.

Throw in a dose of imposter syndrome and fatalism and you have a recipe for some mood swings right before a property is booked again.From a practical point, I would recommend great photos, a clearly defined target to whom you are advertising and understanding the best pricing of an area really well to ake sure you get booked in a timely fashion.From a more meta perspective, be aware that these listings don't typically get booked well in advance (families displaced by flood or fire, traveling nurses who need a new contract ASAP, and construction projects that realize they need a speciality engineer on-site RIGHT NOW don't book ahead). 

When I have done new construction between $500k-$1M in cost the contractor asked for 5% upfront, to be reimbursed at the draw that completes framing, and this was fairly standard in its market. 

Your best bet right now is to live in it and enjoy it as your primary.

Perhaps unprecedented back to back hurricanes will mean that all bets are off and the demand metrics will change moving forward...