Time, Interest, and Energy. 

You can’t stop the house from burning down after you incurred costs, but before you’ve closed. if you’re leveraging, you can’t change interest rate (much.) you can’t guarantee that you don’t have a year of rent loss because your state decided to put a moratorium on evictions. did you see the case in California where the guy sold his house but didn’t move out?

Doors (or clients) that require extensive and constant attention from my staff are not long for this world and will be cut loose.As @Richard F. mentioned, clients fall into those two categories (micromanaging, time-sucking parasites who place zero value on the value of your time, or the "don't bother me unless the house burned down" clients).   

You have very strong equity in your current home, but you don't want to burn it all and make your house worth less with more leverage.

You will have to manage a builder and bank time and energy for that.Out of state investing takes different time and energy inputs by building a team and managing that team to move you closer to your goals.  

This may include tax credits such as 45L for energy efficiency.Optimization of Energy Efficient Tax Credits: AI tools can help real estate investors identify which specific energy upgrades are the most cost-effective upgrades for their properties resulting in a higher return on the improvements.AI can help investors be more efficient and effective with their time and money.

For me, I have more energy and am happier when I work out and eat a somewhat healthy diet (and it definitely recuces stress).

I don't know what you do for a living, but you could try burning the candle at both ends.

.$74.00 Emerson Sensi WiFi smart thermostat - https://www.amazon.com/Emerson-Thermostat-Version-Energy-Cer...This is the exact one we have in our lake house.

The only VA construction loans they do are full / new construction or the energy efficient renovation loans (which I think are more common, but are limited to only energy efficiency improvements).