We know the area well enough to give us some advantages like having a general idea of where we'd like to focus or stay away from before even talking to a realtor for comparison.

If a LL covers utilities, the tenant may be inclined to take of advantage of this and leave hvac running wide open, lights on, etc.  

If your intent is to place long-term tenants and take advantage of a good property manager then it should be more or less hands off for you and the distance shouldn't be too much of a hurdle. 

The advantage of cash is that it's liquid, everyone accepts it around the world, FDIC insured (if it's in an FDIC bank), and is very easy to transact with. 

You can't take advantage of all of these levers of how real estate pays if your equity is tied up in 1 property.

We would be managing it ourselves.We wanted to take advantage of the original, low purchase price of the property and get the long term benefits and cash flow of renting.

Pretty great rates right now, so great thought to pull that $ out and take advantage of the potential bargains that may come from the pandemic.Don't get so excited you over leverage. 

How do I not get taken advantage of in a hard money loan? 

Basically, from what I understand, if you sell a building as a particular Occupancy and the CofO is different, the Contract of Sale can be canceled due to mis-representation.In my experience, I was the Buyer of a buildings which was a 3 Family building but the CofO was for a 4 family building here in Brooklyn (Clinton Hill is the neighborhood).I fully believed I could have canceled the Contract since it said it was a 3 Family, but I purposely did not because it was to my full advantage to buy it with the CofO of a 4 family as I wanted to convert it back to increase the rental income.BTW, once I bought the building, I immediately knocked out a staircase to the apt with 2 floors and installed another kitchen to have 4 total kitchens in the building on each floor.

It's actually a huge advantage to have a steady stream of income while you are a realtor.