If you are serious about investing in other markets, I would absolutely plan a couple of trips that coincide with local meetups/REIA events for each market. 

Have you tried attending any FREE local real estate meet ups in your area?

Use Furnished Finder to study comps, and talk to some local property managers to see if they can help you get an idea.Once you have the gross income potential number, take that and back out all of your expenses.

You’re going to have a legal local lease made up, research the local laws, make sure you don’t even appear to discriminate, figure how/where to advertise, do background checks and so on.

I recently ran into this question with my remote multi-family property so want to see whether people have any thoughts or what should be normal practice.I hired a local 3rd party property management company to help me monitor operations, manage payrolls, and handle issues for my remote multi-family property.

Look for areas with job growth, population growth, and infrastructure development that can drive demand for real estate.Networking and Education: Connect with local real estate investors, agents, lenders, and other professionals to gain insights, knowledge, and potential investment opportunities.

You can try reaching out to local real estate agents as they often have access to off-market properties.

Partnerships with people you don't fully know can get messy pretty quickly so in your scenario I would go to a local bank and get a construction loan.

I see that you are local to the Grand Rapids Area.

A lot of out of state rental property investors and even local landlords prefer buying new construction homes that need as little maintenance as possible.