My counter would be that you would get to your desired cashflow faster by leveraging the equity (or by deploying the cash into new properties instead of paying off the loan early). 

But quickly learned that reality was changing faster than we had ever seen.

I want to know when you will close, cash or financing, how much up front, who's buying, who's financing, any seller concessions, etc.These days we do a lot of electronic signatures to make things faster, because the market can be speedy. 

That way you maximize your cash flow and increase your equity exponentially faster. 

If you are supplementing with bank financing, the best deals are often the ones that need to close very quickly, and much faster than a bank can work with...this is where hard money or private money is a great tool.

I was only looking to do the house hack to accumulate capital faster and also for the knowledge.  

One thing hard money can offer is the opportunity to close faster, but if you dont need that then why do it. 

Individual phone calls will likely be a must for a newer investor, but getting as automated as possible early on, will not only save you time, but will allow you to raise more capital faster. 

If the property is even Luke Warm, it will be gone by the time I get a response from the other agent about something like the water heater (Investors in my area don't pay much weight to that) etc.

I feel that "program interface" gets in the way since I can see what I what faster and cleaner on my Excel sheets or summary sheets.