Ultimately, my goal is to scale my portfolio and purchase a second property within 1-2 years after graduating.

Eventually, you'll have no choice but to get a job to maintain your standard of living.Best source for population growth: WikipediaLast Throughout Your LifetimeYou cannot sustain financial freedom if your income doesn't persist throughout your life.

I made my choice, just giving a perspective for someone whose been around. 

But if I wanted lights and refrigerator etc, I had no choice but solar, this is why you're correctly alluding to the rural aspect.... 

This is a summary of learnings from a recent project I personally completed.  
Steps involved:
1. Buy a home with a large backyard
2. Get permits to build a detached ADU (DADU)/backyard cottage in the backyard
3. ...

Ultimately I think the main focus of the visit is to familiarize yourself with the property (since you have not seen it in person yet) and check on the rehab work and meet your contractor and PM. 

I would consider single family homes as well but multifamily is the ultimate goal.

My ultimate goal is to keep scaling buy 2-3 LTR and hopefully a 4+ plex hopefully within the next 12 months.

Ultimately, I realized that trying to wait for a perfect moment feels a lot like attempting to time the stock market or predict a real estate bubble.There may be advantages to waiting and seeing how the election affects market policies, but it's hard to predict when those policies will take effect or how they’ll impact the market.

I think you'd be making a great choice if you decide to move here.