A lot of landlords have had to severely drop their rental rates to get tenants because they're now competing with huge complexes with parking, bikes, gyms, restaurants and even turn down services.The rest of of the City of Charleston is more affordable than downtown, but it's still a highly competitive market, so getting a good deal takes a lot of hunting.

While they are getting their money back sooner, they aren't profiting when the building makes more than 8%.Is this standard?

It's very rare that you can justify holding off on taking a large sum of money sooner rather than take a similar amount a long time later.

I would like to get into real estate investing as soon as possible, so my question is should I move out so I can qualify for a home occupied loan and get in sooner with a low down payment?

My only regret is not doing it sooner.  

Instead I'd focus on the dirty work of marketing & prospecting for deals, & sooner or later you're going to find a motivated seller (ex older investor with lots of equity looking to liquidate portfolio) who'll do seller financing.

I have been listening to many of the podcasts and I've heard several people say if they could do it again they wouldn't have done the first one owner occupied as having a contractor do the work would have allowed them to get money out sooner and into another property. 

The house would have sold 2 weeks sooner and I could have been ontop of the repairs I previously didn't even know about 

I haven't got to the point where i need a contractor yet, but i def need to make some connections on that sooner than later.

When I sent him the application link, I informed him that I would charge more for rent due to him planning on being a short-term tenant and I have the known cost of a vacancy coming sooner than someone with a 12 month lease.