My thought process was to get started with a simple buy and hold to get some experience under my belt first and then potentially switching to BRRRR to help scale. 

Once you get the basic skills under your belt , you will have them forever .

But there are some beeeeautiful suburbs & Clevelanders really love their city & aren’t all about to pack up & abandon it & move to the sun belt, despite what census data says about the inner city of Cleveland.Go visit in person & actually speak with people & you’ll see that they love the Midwestern charm of Ohio, and they love their cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati & Columbus, and they love their sports teams (yes, even the Browns have a rabid following after 30 yrs of misery - that should tell you something about Clevelanders’ loyalty to their great city right there) and they especially love Buckeye Nation... and they’re not even thinking of mass migration to Arizona despite what the occasional headline in USA Today says :)

I got my first property under my belt and cash flowing well. 

Nearly every market on the list would also be on a list of "fastest declining rust belt cities".

I have a few properties under my belt and access to funding but always looking to learn and grow my network.  

Hello all :) I think @Lee Ripma has great points and the message (I think) she is driving is that, you have to get experience, knowledge and some projects under your belt, before taking on other people's money.

Spent a brief time working for a public REIT running their acquisitions efforts in Phoenix, buying an average of 16-20 properties/mo and assisted efforts in other markets across the Sun Belt.

According to the Emerging Trends in Real Estate report San Antonio is a "Super Sun Belt" market, meaning the Alamo City is among the fastest-growing markets in the U.S.

This could be a better way to enter as you can get some experience under your belt and build some trust with lenders.