I have done my underwriting for 2 years with zero near term appreciation. 

Used houses in the area sell anywhere from $75-125 a square foot.These are long term rentals that I do not plan to sell.I am reading the Rental Property Investing book and implementing the method that focuses on cash flow and that strategy states you need to have $300 cash flow per month, per property.

Having a long-term rental while living abroad is do-able.Flipping houses while abroad, in my opinion, more difficult, especially if its your first go around with real estate.I would recommend taking a flight and staying in the area for a week and inspect the neighborhoods and make connections.You can reach out to @Elenis Camargo who has a PM company in Jacksonville.Best of luck though.

You can put as little as 3-5% down and still legitimately claim the property as a primary residence which gets you better terms. 

I'm most interested in Single-Family or Multi-Family Homes with the intention of having Mid or Long-Term rentals (although I am not opposed to Short-Term either).

The pro development and affordable housing advocates use the term NIMBY, but I suspect it is the rare person that buys in a single family zoned area that would be thrilled to have 17 units (qp16 additional units added) in the lot next to them.My initial protege was the land source on this effort.  

That will put us into the long term capital gains category on the sale. 

I am new to the game and using the FHA loan has just seemed to be the most common way to house hack (at least in terms of what the resources I have read have said). 

It simply depends on your time frame, when you want to actually begin renting the property out short term, and what the loan terms are.

I have 8 long-term units, 3 mid-term units.