If a "regular" residential lender can qualify you, then you are good to go. 

You will have to liquidate your current stock holdings if you wish to go this route - you will need cash to buy real estate.

I'm hoping to get either a 2b/2b condo/townhouse because that's all I can afford and rent out one of the rooms.Assuming I could afford the 20% down for a conventional mortgage, would it be smarter financially and investment-wise to try and put as less cash as possible and pay PMI or go the traditional route and pay 20% or more?

A good agent with a good broker behind them will generally have a list of well vetted vendors they use regularly that provide high quality service. 

Please feel free to add me to any regular zoom catchups or otherwise.

Also having a "regular" job helps a lot with loans which you will need to expand your real estate empire.GL in all your future REI ventures! 

I have electricians, plumbers and heating companies I regularly use and most times it's just a quick phone call to address an issue. 

I was leaning towards the 1031 exchange route, but with the market so hot, finding appropriate properties could be hard.

Now depending on the number of times you've used the program, your specific military service in some cases, and the loan type there are funding fees for the VA loan program; if you're at 0%-4% down, it's under >4%, 5%-9% down, it's a little over 1.5%, and over 10% down under 1.5%.So if you wanted to sell the investment after time and use this as your primary & house hacking until ‘dream home’ days (or moving out of your in-laws), you could sell and pay off the original loan balance and go this route or pay off original loan amount without selling and keeping it and apply for the one time benefit restoration - which is not the same as entitlement re- installment for active/permanent change of station orders or foreclosed upon properties.

Also I was told that I need to pay annual fee to our state to keep the HOA (corporate) active.Lender told me that I can buy 2 regular DP3 insurance policies each to cover both interior and exterior of each unit only if HOA document allows each unit to ensure on its own.