We also have a housing shortage.

In fact, many immigrants—including undocumented ones—are earning strong wages in industries facing severe worker shortages.

And that $6K sounds like a lot to me.There are terrible shortages of tax accountants right now.

If you sell your only overachiever to go with a more leveraged position, you could have 2-3 properties that may cover themselves or even provide a little profit, but when the rental markets shift (and they do), now you have 2-3 properties that all require you to supplement for their shortages. 

I would probably start in Albany and then 1031 into 2-3 multifamily buildings in the city, but you'll do you and I'll do me.I live and invest in east side of Rochester, NY, there is a shortage of houses due to 20 years of negative population growth followed by significant growth post pandemic. 

Yes. build to rent in urban core adjacent neighborhoods. traditionally in our market in Columbus Ohio existing inventory was good 2014-2020. as prices rose, the cost to build started to match existing inventory prices because of supply shortage, especially for 2-4 multiunit dwellings. around that time we started to look at new construction and land. we found that land is a 12 month or more supply in our market which makes it a buyers market and you can design any structure you want in new construction. if you like a layout or floorplan all you have to do is design it. after that we looked at the right unit mix and Floorplans and layouts. we started looking at high rent per square foot layouts that were better than single family.

Nope, no shortage of "WTF" moments there. 

IF you can qualify for the $1million+ duplex downtown never a shortage of rental demand, but have to be able to qualify for that price point. 

At 6 per 100 in my targetted town there's a ~75 unit shortage, similar 10k population. 

And did you have any time budget overruns, permits taking longer than you expected, or material shortages, contractors not showing up on time- things like that?