My primary question is, did anyone purchase something big early as their first ever RE investment (or very soon after the first) such as an apartment building, a multi-family package deal, SFH package (or quick subsequent purchases) with a total combined PP of $750k+?

Either they completely got out of business (possible..) or they will be back and raring to go in 1 year or so.  

Prices look to be all over place in East Hampton.For vacancy, I like 8% on MFR.Repairs and CapEx bump to 15% combined.

I rarely see national, credit tenants take space of this type outside of an urban core...

Unless you are rather experienced with this type of damage, it may be hard for your to tell the extent of damage.Wholesaling it adds another level of challenge because most savvy investors won't buy a fire-damaged property--we are a pretty rare breed, so your buyers pool is smaller. 

Hope Mills is a good part of town for sure, but my opinion is that you're too far towards the top of the price range.It's your first one, and it's rare people get great deals on their first one (mine was awful), so I'm not beating you up but you need to know where the goal post is for minimum acceptable deals and for Fayetteville the minimum is about 1.3x price/rent and 20% equity creation.

I only deal in shingled roofs but very very rarely do my guys take longer than 1 day!

And it's extremely rare that I have enough equity built in to refinance.  

It's a rare circumstance where I prefer to I prefer to inherit a tenant with the property, almost always prefer vacant. 

Virtual Leasing - we have completely transitioned to virtual leasing, using a combination of existing marketing assets (professional property photography, videos, and 360 tours) while rolling out a best practice program for our staff to utilize mobile devices (pads and phones) to create available unit specific tours.