My biggest advice is to buy a house that will be most appealing to your future tenant.

Am I crazy to accept a little lower CoC in order to get into the area which I believe has tremendous momentum and growth for the foreseeable future?

And if you are interested in continuing to invest in real estate beyond your house-hack you will have already laid the ground work for future investing opportunities.

It will also be easier to rent in the future when you show potential new tenants the lower utility bills. 

I’m looking into hard money lending companies, also working on building relationships with possible future investors or lenders.

They are probably not going to admit over billing and refund us any money.In the future, how do we make sure their bills are reasonable and honest?

Your future in-laws may have the connections to get a construction loan and a  take out loan after the fact but it may be years before a decent, vacant lot becomes available.  

No one can say for sure about a year in the future.

I took my ARV and reduced it by 25% for the future loan and arrived at a 20k budget.  

@Caleb Jordan  No real feedback other than you picked-up a lot of experience on this deal that will carry forward to future deals.Most folks out there would have over-spent on the house purchase, over-spent on repairs and then lost 10-20k on the sale side.