@Mark Webb:You CAN do the former, but it isn't the smartest thing to do.

I just closed a deal to get to 12 STRs here and I am personally going to hit the pause button and transition towards more LTRs unless something really good comes across my desk. 

I would guesstimate that annual revenue is just below or around the million dollar mark with a labor percentage around the mid 20's!

Common fees will include a set-up fee, a leasing fee for each turnover or a lease renewal fee, marking up maintenance, retaining late fees, and more.

You will likely need to eventually buy another property within the 5 year mark as it is likely hard to justify spending 750 hours on one property(Duplex in a given year.750 hours divided by 52 weeks is about 14.5 hours a week.

And mark these mother-truckers up, they are paying for the convenience... providing you aren't somehow preventing them from buying the stuff themselves beforehand (the way movie theaters do), it's not at all immoral. 

@Mark Adams,I know of Charter Financial, but I don't have first-hand experience. 

With my limited experience explained, here's the situation.I have ear marked a good amount to start real estate investing.

Common fees will include a set-up fee, a leasing fee for each turnover or a lease renewal fee, marking up maintenance, retaining late fees, and more.

I do it mostly because the veteran real estate investors here know you never find anything but human feces and decades-old porn behind water heaters, and I think it's a great private joke for all of us about how weird this business is, especially seeing how the newbies react, all offended that anyone could possibly be dishonest here in the forums about finding rubberbanded and cellophane-wrapped stacks of used twenties in a hundred-year-old defunct crapshack in Yinzerburgh, of all places.And every year, right on the button, I get a bunch of people who insist they know exactly how I should invest my found money.