I really see Columbus Ohio as an extremely safe bet for the next 10-20 years.

Good to hear some progress is made.

G'Day Carlos,Personally, I think it's a recipe for disaster rehabbing from out of state.IMO you would need deep roots in the specific market you are looking at investing.Or years long experience of knowing the who, what and when in that specific market.I only know of a handful of folks that can do it successfully and even they have been at it for many years and probably still loose money on rehabs to this day, no matter how integrated they are with everything and everyone.A good resources for pre-purchase, during rehab and after rehab's is Inspectify.Always get eyes on site before buying a property or processing a progress draw for the rehab.Much success

And the new rule only applies to legacy STR owners, not new investors.Your best bet is to comply with the law and see if your investment still works.

Their jobs include finding properties (he’s a realtor), walking properties prior to purchase (only those we can’t estimate rehab from pics), inspecting GC’s work and progress. - unless the property is a complete gut job we pay for a home inspection during our due diligence- we only hire GC’s.  

I don't know which are best but you can bet if it supplies too little the tenants will change them for ones that flow more.

A pro account at DealMachine comes with skip tracing on all properties, that might be your best bet with a budget.For agent cold-calling, look up Mojo.

I would guess just based off of the info given that your best bet for wealth building is to go low down payment in NC in a great area (Im down here, if you have any questions shoot me a dm) and hold the NJ property.

Betting this market is flat for 5-10 years to absorb the 50% inflation from Covid $. 

It won't be packaged as nice as someone you are paying $XX,XXX.XX for... but I bet you fifty bucks there is nothing they will do for you that this forum or those other resources will not know about, or help you with.