@Joseph Miller is there any city where you boots on the ground or a competitive advantage. 

With CA prices, it creates the need for high amounts of capital on hand at anytime, but the competition in CA is crazy too.

Are they very competitive?

There is no shortage of competition to drive up property values.

Will your competition grab it first?

For our family situation, I’m not sure that multi-family is an option for us, in addition to the fact that my husband has multiple trailers and heavy equipment.

You can get a pretty nice duplex in either one, you just have to be very quick, because you are not the only one who sees the benefits in house hacking lolFHA is not a great loan option at the moment, because we are in such a competitive market and FHA inspections are not popular with sellers.

SFH are quite competitive and don't really cashflow. 

but many parts of the country still have never heard or used them.I used one 3 years ago in Charleston SC and both brokers did not know what I was talking about.. and I got the lot I wanted for just 2k over.. the competition the idea of paying more than list was just not even on their radar.. we are finding right now the EXTREME demand at certain price points just buying them holding them long enough to clean them out and re market works well. 

In today's market here in Norfolk its very competitive, I just got a Duplex which I'm currently renovating for house hacking.