😂Plenty of lovely folks there, plus it's where Cannon Air Force Base is located, but we soon discovered that just having a base nearby didn't necessarily make for a lively real estate market.Shortly after that, we adopted our MUCHAS criteria:M - Near a military baseU - Has at least one college or universityC - Has a Costco or equivalentH - Has a hospital ranked at least as a Level II Trauma CenterA - Has a commercial airportS - Has a Sprouts (organic grocery) or equivalentThis has led us to look at often-overlooked markets like Lubbock, Texas and Augusta, Georgia.May be worth a look for you as well!

We have found that setting our expectations about what we want is helpful (financial performance, level of renovation we can handle, forced equity opportunities, number of bedrooms, etc) and then waiting for a deal to materialize. 

Where I would ultimately like to end up is with multiple properties that I rent out, even on an international level, as I love to travel.In order to achieve my goal: What strategies could you all recommend?

There's no right or wrong way to do this, just varying levels of risk and reward and YOU need to understand what they are for whatever strategy you choose. 

My recommendaiton would be to build the ground level as a "wet basement".

Given your income level you might be shooting for 225k house with a 150k purchase price.  

It doesn't seem fair that I'm unable to reciprocate on their level. 

@Bryan Cavellier, You can 1031 with any US property including Guam, the USVI and ...drum roll- The Northern Marianas Islands (go figure but I actually had a realtor from there in a class of mine recently) into any other US or one of those territories.  1031 is a federal statute so it's applied the same in all locals with just a few variations state to state at the state level. 

Granite or Quartz on all counter tops including bathrooms.. our up stairs is 9 foot.. and our single levels are 10 foot to 14 foot which NO other builder does in a subdivision type build only custom homes over 1 mil would have that.. flooring is engineered hard wood.. custom cabinets with soft close on all doors in the house..

I had to do an elaborate french drain system with multiple pumps as the lower level units would get water with hard rains.