Hi everyone, I thought about submitting this question to the podcast, but I wanted to post it here first to see what people here thought. 

The location wasn't available from the drop-down menu, but it's Northern Virginia, Fairfax.

I'm currently a fresh investor planning to scale and located in the Northern Virginia region. My current properties include a townhome on the further edge of the Virginia side of the DC metropolitan area, which my father rents out, and I break even on in terms of income from his lease. My only other property is a free-standing single-family home bought with a friend and where I currently live now. Both of these properties started as house hacks, and I'm confident that both will cash flow modestly and appreciate to a larger degree as time goes on. These results were due to good fortune in finding and negotiating a good deal and locking in a low rate early enough to keep my monthly payments as low as possible. I'm in the process of appreciating out of the PMI on my first townhome/father's residence.

I know that David recommends that, at the minimum, a real estate investor should prioritize accumulating a property every year through house hacking. I shared this mindset back in 2019 when I bought my first one and proceeded to buy another 18 months later. As a result, my fiance and I are on board buying single-family homes like the one I'm in now and in the same general location. However, due to rising rates on top of higher prices, I'm concerned about exit strategies when the time comes for my fiance and me to move on to our next next house hack (the next house hack after the one we plan to buy this year), as the monthly payment cannot cashflow positively by renting out the whole house. The solution I have in my head is to continue to rent by the room. While I wouldn't describe my area as a "college town", we live near the state's largest college in terms of the student body, with most being commuters who will need the kind of housing we're looking to own and provide. However, is this a sustainable scaling solution? I don't mind putting in room-by-room management to both cash flow and scale in this high-demand area; however, buying one house hack a year is probably the most we can do at our current incomes. 

I've heard David stress that people shouldn't emphasize cash flow as much in today's market, and the market I'm in, I feel, embodies that philosophy. Future rent increase potential and appreciation will be incredibly powerful in this DC metro area, with the university accessible even without a car. 

Now on to my questions:

1. Should I continue with my plan to house hack one new property a year even if I won't be able to lease the entire house for positive cash flow and be forced to rent by the room to sustain operations?

2. Is there a point where these management plans become an unprofitable, time-consuming activity that might hold me back from future opportunities? 

3. Finally, from the picture I painted of my local market, would it be better for my fiance and I instead focus on getting a property to house hack with plans to reside in long-term? After which, we'd use those savings to prioritize other forms of real estate investing, such as BRRRR, STR, and long-distance buy-and-hold.