It is a great opportunity to buy a house near my area.

There are definitely great opportunities for STR/MTR.

I am also trying to figure out what my next job would be.

As an example, I'm personally looking for long term appreciation to generate wealth in the future, because I make money for my day to day expenses with my current job.

Even for a buy & hold investor there are opportunities to make more money when rents are flat by attacking expenses.

I agree, I wouldn’t be able to manage a STR with my current job so focusing on MTR for the rental rates here and ease to manage.

Maybe there is an opportunity to put a little less down payment and use the rest to force more equity via renovations.

General contractor in business for 40+ years with an opportunity to acquire someone else's unfinished rehab for ~$2M with an ARV of $4M - $6M depending on whether we finish the existing project or tear down and start over with a better design. 

since then, I have made offers in a different market (~6 offers) that would be only ok purchases (apparently not following my own advice, but it is a new market so I do not have the opportunities that I have in my market) but none have been accepted.  

I am not good at design at all, but I do have some clients who basically copied top producing properties design and did a great job themselves.