Based on all of your suggestions I decided to simply advertise the unit as an anticipated vacancy and mention in the ad that I can only show the place starting 07/01 and that it is available to rent anytime after that.

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Does the local knowledge and contact base in a flat market outweigh the possible gains to be had in a growing market?

I need to find an asset based lender that is willing to base financing on the income of the property.

I'm based in Charleston but am in Columbia a few times each month.

NOI, and thus cap rate, feeds into how much of a down payment is required b/c it feeds into the "sizing" of the loan.Many asset classes, like apartments and offices, have less than ideal in place cap rates today, so you need 35% or 50% down to buy them (unlike a DTI-based home loan, your personal W2 income cannot be used to significantly offset).

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On the podcast David keeps saying that house hacking is the easiest way to build wealth through real estate, advising to add one property each year paying 5% down.I'm theory it sounds great but in reality assuming you buy a property in the 500k range, there's no way you'll be able to make it cash flow which makes it hard if not impossible to actually scale and do this every year or two.What are your thoughts?

I've spent the last few weeks researching and trying to broaden my knowledge on the subject as well as listening to a couple webinars and podcast.

Based on the kind of return you expect, I would stand pat.