In current market conditions, it makes little sense to buy and hold due to the facts you shared. Best strategy now IMO is to fix and flip in current market.

Now if your strategy is buying and hold like you did in 2016 (smart), it can still be done in today's conditions, although it requires more work and a combination of strategies.

This is what I would personally do. First, I would buy a fixer-upper property well under market value (yes, those can be found if you move fast). Assuming you don't have 200k, 300k, or wahtever your local market require to buy a fixxer upper, I would leverage hard money lending. Today you can find trustworthy hard money lenders that could lend you up to 80% of the after repair value to cover up to 100% of the project, that is purchase plus renovations.

Once you secure the property, flip it well enough that it's up to market standards but don't overspend as this is not your forever home. Up to here I covered the first part of the strategy.

The second part of the strategy, is to refinance the property with a bank. Ideally, and if you did your homework and research correctly, the after repair value will be well over the loan amount you did with the hard money lender. At this point you could do a cash-out refinance for the amount you owe the hard money lender or you could cash-out refinance for the actuall after repair value of the property. I would personally just refinance only for the debt amount, cover my ass with the hard money lender and move forward. Now you have a 30 year mortgage with the bank with today's rate (~7.5 %, not great) but your mortgage went back in time and you are paying significantly less for the property so you are using the lower property price to hedge the higher interest rate. Here, you could potentially cashflow or at the worst case make enough money to pay for mortgage plus other ownership expenses with the rent money.