Its a nice little cheat/loophole on the mortgage side that can help afford a larger home pice and increase your chances of getting a home or other loans.If you have any questions feel free to reach out I am always happy to help and go over the basics.

However, that same market segment usually isn't interested in larger houses, such as a 5 bedroom. 

Instead of 40 houses cash flowing $200 each or $8000/month, you buy 10 houses and pay them off for a cash flow of $10,000/month with 1/4th the headache.People don't understand the amount of time, energy, and stress involved with managing a lot of doors, especially if they are lower-class properties typically needed to generate cash flow.

As you get more experience, scaling up to larger properties will open up even more opportunities.

I was in a similar position a few years ago, but fortunately got married and our combined incomes helped us qualify for a larger house hack.We're on our second one in NOVA, Alexandria to be exact, and instead of rent by the room, we are renting out our walkout basement on Airbnb to monthly guests.That said, we have a number of friends doing well with rent by the room across NOVA, though they're purchasing homes with 5+ rooms or finding homes that can be renovated to include that setup.I'd recommend attending meetups such as the one I cohost, NOVA REI or Cashflow Breakfast Club or any of the others to meet those who are house hacking.

There's lots of properties for sale in the Smoky mountains so you may also have a larger selection of options to purchase as well.

Build up your portfolio with a professional landlord and then as your portfolio grows transfer the assets over to a larger PM firm for ongoing accounting and management. 

This tends to be more time intensive and more for someone that has a lot of time and limited income as you may find a "home run" type deal with some effort/energy.

Any thoughts/advice for small investors trying to get into larger properties?

These are entirely relationship-based and do take time and energy to cultivate but are very lucrative once you cultivate them.