If the house hack is renting rooms within your house; tax wise likely worse because you can only depreciate the fully rental areas (bedrooms and maybe bathrooms).

If multifamily interests you, you might want to consider house hacking as a low risk strategy to start.

Is it a room in your house? 

ONly money spent securing the house against waste.

The baseball season lasts 6-7 months, and I am given free housing during this time, wherever I am currently assigned to play.

Our main focus is finding properties with the highest return on investment, particularly through rental income.Additionally, we’d love to connect with local real estate agents or property management companies who can help us learn more about the area and potentially collaborate with us.Thank you so much for your time and insights!

I was thinking about buying the land (maybe it is 20-30k for the .25 acre lot), finding a builder in the area, and seeing if I could build a ~1,250 sq ft 3/2 single family house and see if I could make the math work. 

You see a house on google street view, bid like there is a house there, and you bid your $50,000 minimum bid up to $100,000 for your $200,000 house. 

There are a few Dundalk neighborhoods I'd stay away from but for the most part it's a great area for house hacking/BRRRR.

The building tradesmen are busy too, but I just called ABC and got the name of a guy who buys alot of bitumen roofing so as to get a quote on a leaky patio cover, got a guy to bid cement board skirting on a stick house by calling Palm Harbor mfgr home sales center, got a card from a guy working across the street doing drywall repair and put it in my phone.