This is my first experience -- either they are professional deal killers in general, or I ended up dealing with 3 in a row who happened to be deal killers. 

I would love your experiences because my alternative is to spend a ton of money on airdna data! 

The good news is, with your experience and equity built, you're in a fantastic position to jump in.The key thing to remember with these larger deals is that they're rarely done solo.

Instead, I'm interested in gaining experience and learning from your expertise.

I would love to hear how your real estate experiences has been!

I have 40 years of experience in the home design and construction industry, a ton of skills, and talent.

I was wondering if there's anyone here from the the area that has experience with house hacking to pick their brain a bit.

Its certainly hard to cash flow significantly in the current environment (high rates, high values etc) - I tend to think though that just "doing" a first deal even if it doesn't make too much is valuable versus getting stuck in analysis paralysis - the learning from the experience of actual doing it generally is 10X + even a ton of courses, info, spreadsheets etc

Maybe, but I have a lot of trust in the team given the experience from my first property.

You don't need to know everything to get started; you need a foundation to build on and the rest will come through experience and then refining your education.You can build a basic understanding of investing in 3-6 months.