STR - How much rennovation & To use a property manager or not?

[Akash Kakumani]

The location is more accurately 

coachella, CA 

The location box didn't have that city so I put what I saw was closest. Anyways onto my question:

There are a lot of tax incentives to having an STR if you do it yourself. This would be my very first purchase in a new market (I'm from norcal) and I'm worried about taking on the burden of managing. I found one property manager that will help me accomplish the requirements for meeting the tax needs as well and only requires 10%. But this manager is less experienced than another property manager that will take 20% and has 50 properties. The other option is I say screw it and manage it myself. Which direction do you recommend?

Also both property managers have recommended that I at minimum have a pool installed in the house since it's hot in this area. One property manager (10%) is more flexible and says that I can get away with 100-150K of rennovations (including pool which is 80K), whereas the other (20%) property manager says I would need to do 200K to get the returns I'm looking for. So - how much rennovation do you think is necessary? 

It's a 5 bedroom 3 bath with 2800 sqft. I intend on expanding the bedrooms since that's what the market seems to really like (the more bedrooms the better) based on conversations. 

Also unrelated question - is there a way to connect and speak to someone live for a full consultation on this website? I'd love to go over my spreadsheet and assumptions as I'm for lack of a better term "******** bricks" with this first property :) 

Thanks for your help!