Flexibility and meeting the sellers needs.

I'm a big fan of commercial properties, especially because of the flexibility of commercial zoning.

A HELOC however, gives you the flexibility to have a credit line you don't have to pay off until you use it, which is very powerful. 

Local banks can often be helpful because they have more flexible loan products. 

Since I live here, there's more flexibility with when/how I renovate and could definitely see us doing this a few more times.

No but you should have some closing and flexible closing time to be able to identify that next property. 

It seems like a great go-to to start with because there's not much flexibility with banks and I don't have capital to always put 20%-30% down on a property.

I also have a great network of trustworthy people I could easily build a team with.Would it be better for me to put all my money into a small property locally and utilize my existing network, or should I buy out of state and have more flexibility to BRRRR and scale up quickly?

There are a lot of services out there, as far as skip tracing goes take care to find one that offers flexible pricing options to fit your needs, has excellent customer service to walk you through the process, and even a referral program.

Recently many builders did not want to sell to investors....with the change in the market many may have become more flexible.