If you are a person who has a full time job, or runs other companies, it is my professional opinion that you will be better served having the GC handle everything and report to you on your schedule.Once you decided to run the operation yourself, you are now employed by the development.

Make sure to ask them questions like how many people they have helped house hack, or so on so you can get the right person to help

My number one piece of advice is finding a group that you can attend online or in person to keep you motivated and accountable to your goals. 

Generally, the seller provides an affidavit at closing the avers there is no other person in possession of the property other than the seller and the exception is deleted based on the representation. 

Or can you still run everything through your personal return (just want to make sure that I can deduct things such as HOA fees which I can do if it is a rental).2) If I do decide to run everything thru my personal tax return (save on LLC fees), should I at the least set up a separate bank account to track costs separately?

Hard to say one way or another without knowing your personal finances, goals etc., but it seems like a good deal. 

An ignorant person lacks knowledge or awareness.

I personally invest in all areas of Columbus and so do most of my investors.

What we found was only one other person contracted under $200 per square foot for clients and they also built within the city of columbus. the numbers have a much higher premium the closer you get to downtown. if you can't get the numbers to work my recommendation would be to get closer to downtown. we do build to rent development and single family home development and every line item is broken out. on the triples we have to build exterior staircases etc there are some things you can't really understand unless you build a lot. hope that helps but no one is going to build you for 110 a square foot. the lowest cost homes in our market at cost without a profit barely dip into 140 a square and we are in one of the cheapest construction markets and states in the country. 

City proper has been on 5 year bear market completely unrelated to anything political, the suburbs have been adding inventory since the summer but are still very low but any measure and have actually gotten tighter the last few month, while I am open to the idea these cuts could eventually have some effect on the market, about 20% of the dc area is federal employees, let’s say the federal government cut the work force 25% which would be huge, that’s 5% of the population, but a good number of those people are either two income households where one person works in the private and/or the person being laid can go get a similar job in the provide sector l, the percentage of households who would be forced to sell thier house over this is likely in very low single digits.