I live on the East Coast and I too am an out of state investor primarily since Long Island is a particularly expensive area as a whole to invest in. 

Pete Beach and Treasure Island heating up, it might be worth tapping into that dormant potential.

Interestingly, I live in my community (Marco Island) with my short term rentals and have for years.  

@Bryan Cavellier, You can 1031 with any US property including Guam, the USVI and ...drum roll- The Northern Marianas Islands (go figure but I actually had a realtor from there in a class of mine recently) into any other US or one of those territories.  1031 is a federal statute so it's applied the same in all locals with just a few variations state to state at the state level. 

I am wondering if there is any market in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, or Washington DC that would "make sense" to house hack given my financial position? 

My husband has worked for one of the largest national home builders for 23 years.

Check with these guys, I live on Catalina Island which is High Fire Zone and they were able to help me.

By-the-way it's the largest wholesaler group on the network in my opinion.Happy Hutting

I run one of the largest Cryptocurrency Trading communities in the world.

Our Brokerage runs the largest REI networking group in Lansing.