Creative financing: Explore seller financing or subject-to deals for your next property, which often require less upfront cash and bypass traditional lending limits.You’re on the right track thinking long-term—house hacking and leveraging your duplex are great moves.

If you move title to the property into a trust for the seller's "Estate Planning purposes", you still need the mortgage company's approval. 

Over the past year, we’ve seen values go up anywhere from 3-6%, and with more people moving in, that trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

I put my location as New York since that is where I will be moving after college for work.

It's one of the hottest markets in the US right now with so much population growth, job growth, and companies moving/developing here (26B Intel headquarters being built here, 68K+ enrollment in Ohio State University, Amazon, FB, Google, Honda, Nationwide, Anduril, etc.).

I own a home which I’m currently living in and planning on making a long-term rental property as well once I move out.

That way you have them in your back pocket when you find the right one, and generally lenders can move a little faster to close the deal once you're already pre-approved and in their system. 

If we can work out a deal with a number of builders to keep their properties moving than we can also ask this builder to give some incentives to the investor. 

You can likely still sell the house and move on if you need to.

It's one of the hottest markets in the US right now with so much population growth, job growth, and companies moving/developing here (26B Intel headquarters being built here, 68K+ enrollment in Ohio State University, Amazon, FB, Google, Honda, Nationwide, Anduril, etc.).