Our rental market is extremely tight with little availability which is driving rents higher.

What's driving you to want to invest in real estate?

I would throw caution at giving credibility to news stories about rates driving people out of Florida or increased natural disasters impacting rates.

This does not pass the sniff test at all.

I'm looking into potentially house hacking a small multi-family home, preferably in northern NJ (such as Morris county) or Westchester, NY if possible, but I'm open to other areas that are hopefully within about 1.5 hours (driving or public transit) of Manhattan.

This post doesn't pass the sniff test.

You can buy something like a cheap Arlo camera system at Costco and pay for the Internet connection in one of your units.You could ask law enforcement to do routine drive-bys or safety checks.

Most folks would prefer to drunk drive home from the games unfortunately.

I called my own mold remediation contractor who tested and remediated mold.  

so test drive before you buy full price is ok, for $50 veritas.renatus.rocks .