If you can start local or close whether it's a house hack or being creative I would first

Or are you planning on renting rooms out (house hacking) while you still live there?  

I'd house hack and live in one of the units the first year, and use an FHA 3.5% loan.

Our plan was to do the traditional house-hack, but things haven’t gone as planned.During some self-testing followed by professional testing, we discovered lead in several high-traffic areas of the home.

The best house hacks cash flow from living in the smallest and renting the biggest so you need to work out all the scenarios that could come up.

@Megan Alanhello. house hacking is a powerful strategy. in an ideal house hack you would:-pay roughly the same that you'd pay in rent, net to the mortgage. 

Baking a CakeYou can read up on what a cake is, what goes in a cake and go stock up on a bunch of ingredients.  

Jump ahead a year and we closed on on 8/17/2018 on our first physical investment, an A/B class duplex in Rockwall, TX for a house hack.

There is also algorithm advantageous to bi-weekly vs monthly, so a bit of a credit-hack boost effect to it. 

@Paul Bogard going to assume you are buying this proeprty to live in while you "house hack".First, you should understand +95% of real estate agents ONLY know how to sell owner-occupied properties and are almost useless for investors:(Find an agent that has rental properties themself or can PROVE they've got successful repeat investor clients.Secondly, you can greatly improve your cashflow by renting out your other bedrooms.