(Ask me how I know this.)You'll be priced out of virtually any quality market as you'll need to put anywhere from 25-40% down if you'd like to cash flow in a deal you don't have to significantly rehab (or found off-market) with interest rates where they're at (and don't expect them to go down to 4% anytime this decade either--a 3-4% interest rate is historically low and investors in the 2010s were lucky and spoiled). 

Had I hired a professional, it would have been done in a month and the extra five months of rent income would have paid for the contractor, saving me six months of nights and weekends.

I have recently been applying to jobs that teach and train real estate agents to wholesale, looks like it could a good opportunity on account that they have the capital. Im curious to see if anyone here has had experi...

We did 'win' one at auction that I could not enter without my eyes watering & dry wretching, but the young couple I hired to gut it had no problem.

I represent a lot of buyers in Tampa, and some hire me for full service PM, limited service PM, and some self manage. 

If you wanted to, you could simply hire one of the many other PM's out there, rent the thing for $1,200+ and them sell it in 10-15 years for a healthy profit.

Someone I know bought a ranch to use as a short term rental property in 2021 for $1.7 million.Engineers did a virtual site visit, they were able to assign a value of $347,000 to either 5-7-15 year assets that were eligible for depreciation.In 2021, the bonus depreciation amount that you could take was 100%.This means that the owner could immediately deduct the full amount of eligible property in the year it was placed in service, rather than depreciating it over time.With that in mind, he took the full $347K deduction in his FIRST YEAR of ownership to offset taxable income from rentals.This was roughly ~20% of his purchase price.It was a big win for him.In 2024, the bonus depreciation rate is 60% so the calculation would be different.That said, you can still save and defer a ton.

I would love it to be local (rather than virtual).

As others have mentioned, the virtual accounts you can set up for each property was really intriguing to me. 

Plenty of pics and having a virtual tour for potential guest to instill a sense of confidence in the property.