Your experience and resume of recent deals has more weight than your personal financial position.

Yup How would I know the advice one person gives me is good advice if I am a newbie?

House hacking will also give you some personal "property management" experience.

I personally am looking to do a cash out refi to buy another property.

This is a very different model than the owning your own asset and managing yourself to optimize cash flow like in Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth, but it is a legit syndication.I have not personally invested with them but I know their head of data very well and I have seen that their underwriting is RIGOROUS.

Or is this for you personally?

I would file an appeal of the code decision.

and with record new class A multi-family coming online now and 2025 in Austin/Dallas/Houston, perhaps focusing on multi-family would be most lucrative for you, which you already have personal experience in, over next few years then you can acquire really good value deals as prices will likely come down quite a bit, ie more supply/higher 10 yr etc.     

I think it depends on how comfortable you want your tenants to be, but me personally I wouldn't add it.

As well as leasing without seeing the apartment in person does feel weird.