Or would you wait and try to find a good combination unit to live in / rent out, but possibly face +1 to +2% interest rates.There seem to be a few locations where I might be able to roughly breakeven if I move out 1-2 years from now and rent it out, but they are in suburban areas that far from DC, and as a single guy in his late 30's, it concerns me that I'd end up being a hermit.How would you balance lifestyle vs. investing at this point? 

FHA has higher fees, an upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium of 1.75% of the balance (rolled into the loan) and .85% MI.  

It's difficult here to differentiate between giving good advice and advocating mentorship programs, workshops or courses to advance your one on one activity and thus speed up the learning curve and timeline to reaching and stretching your goals.I personally have gone the journey from DIY wholesaling, flipping, seller-financing SFR and international Short Term Vacation Rental management and then arrived at commercial multifamily and self-storage real estate syndication due to the fact that it offers the maximum scalability, economy of numbers and at some point truly leads to passive, residual income and thus to time freedom and choice.Send me a colleague request to kick the tires, set up a call and get a few burning questions answered in real time, one on one. 

But it is not very difficult tax wise filing.

They are quite aggressive in the Keys in enforcing the No short term rentals without the proper license, which is difficult to get.

They are difficult to deal with. 

I still need to work with traditional agents a lot of the time, however, and thus it can still be difficult to get even the best deal to stick if it’s non-traditional.

There's much misconception regarding the roles of custodians and administrators, as well as the extent to which they should be relied on for advisory services.There are many excellent companies, but as the number of custodians/administrators has swelled it has become increasingly difficult to navigate the space.

This goes past the numbers/math that can be made to tell any story you want.Example could be: Rough area, difficult tenants, eviction, very "hands on".... but you get 600/mo for your 30k house.

Don't know about the punishing out of state owners part, personally I'd like to see it become far more difficult and expensive for non-US investors.