I’m excluding travel time to the property for the STR’s.Any words of wisdom regarding material participation that you referenced?

Most of these are fairly cheap education. 

REI Game Changers is a beginner program that relies on cheap spray and pray list marketing.

It is expensive but money is not cheap at all nowadays and as others mentioned even getting a LOC against a rental property is a huge score as not many lenders are lending on that product.Question I have is what are you using the $ for and can you earn it back? 

If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale cheap. 

I also suspect the seller's friend rented the other unit because the rent is cheap and the landlord is a pushover.I would look at this entire situation carefully.

At the time, I also had a job that kept me traveling, so I didn’t need much space and used the opportunity to rent out the nicer rooms in my homes.

Cheap suction cup didn't work for the vinyl plank tiles, but the $30 double suction worked good. 

It wont be cheap though.

I would use cleaning services but it's my understanding I could use more than one company over the course of the year to limit how many hours one company spends on it.I'm looking into a utilitarian STR more for business travelers, so this won't be one where everything is perfect, it's bound to accumulate wear and tear I think.The STR would be out of state, but I plan to travel there for probably two weeks a year where I would perform many repairs myself.