A lot of the advice I am seeing here and other places seems to oriented towards younger newbies - For ex: - house hacking or BRRR - these are not appealing to me. 

Only the house 5 down with the same sq ft is literally worth 100K more because the neighborhood actually changes in those 5 houses. 

With your focus in using house hacking, Conventional or FHA loans would be your best options.

If you wanted to house hack I would stay where you are at and find one there.

For example, I live in Gilbert, AZ, which isn't exactly the cheapest place to live, so if I begin to look for a house here in AZ are the lenders going to want to see 300k-400k$ in liquid assets for me to get approval for a mortgage (as the homes in my area are around 800K-1M)? 

I’m fairly new to REI and looking to learn more about house hacking, fix and flipping, and fonding renters.  

Quote from @Jinxiang Xu: New to being a landlord, and already forked out $20k for foundation repair on this rental house.

Cabin rentals out there are not like houses for primary residences.

Most old houses it is about 4 ft at the perimeter of the room, maybe less. 

They had previously been combined into one house.