I plan am targeting 2-4 unit apartments in SE and NE but a single family home in Northern Virginia or PG County MD may be a good starting place for a house hack. 

so one of your 'slots' is eaten up with your personal house if financed.Getting approved for loans is a whole process unto itself...

(HUD guidelines, see pg. 11). 

I recommend looking at some duplexes in pg right now.

I highly recommend a personal guaranty, if he is the majority owner and a noncredit tenant, you need that PG if he walks.

Id probably be partial in your area to either Montgomery County or Anne Arundel county due to the lower real estate tax rates in those counties versus Howard and PG. 

It took him over a week to get back to me with some very narrow time slots during times of day I previously told him don't work for me.

And for better or worse many read BP and other social media and feel that they need very high COC returns and will pass over other investments that dont meet their criteria.. you see that all the time on BP  Poster says I am looking for property with this criteria well most want a very high return and as such its common knowledge that there is a slot that properties have to fit into to create that return and its generally the C class stuff and some B..  

Scott's "The Book on Flipping Houses" pg 71 where he writes (as part of large set of general guidelines only) that it is better to have an area where "the majority of houses are lived in by the owners as opposed to being rented out.

I don’t work with intermediaries who merely pass along any loan without having been able to filter out the 90% of the deals that are over priced, lacking in legal documentation, or are so risky that the expected returns replicate a slot machine at a North Dakota convenience store.