I am lost on which avenue to take from the options of house hacking, buy and hold (short-term rental), buy and hold (mid-term rental), buy and hold (long-term rental), BRRRR, flipping, etc.

The best way to start investing with 0% down is to buy a multi-family and live in one of the units. 

I've been a real estate investor for 3 years, at first it was going to be buy and flip but I re-evaluated my markets and changed to rent and hold.

Do you think we'd be better off selling the property and buying some land to build on elsewhere, or should we clear this?

BiggerPockets also has a calculator to analyze deals, and I highly recommend you start this as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to buy.

Yes, it's possible to use a 1031 exchange to roll the proceeds from selling your first rental property into a BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) deal, but there are a few important things to consider.

I'm not bold enough to buy real estate at negative leverage - few deals in my area (and I presume, Manhattan), are trading at "Cap Rates" greater than 7%. 

The suburb I'm buying into here is in the top 10 fastest appreciating cities in Ohio. 

I plan to buy a waterfront property. 

Personally I wouldn't buy it.