From calls at 2am to unlock the house because the tenants were drunk and locked themselves out to a call to "let me know" there was water bubbling up from under the sidewalk out front (yep, that was expensive). 

I see self storage of course as a business and one that you need to scale so you can have management handle it all for you,  like you do.. for the average investor on BP I see them starting out with little facilities and if your running them yourself it can be management intensive.. only in the fact you have folks coming and going and you have to run down and unlock them do your evictions etc etc.Like you I had 350 SFR's  and sold those and was happy to do that..

Thankfully a second floor window had been left unlocked, so my husband boosted me up and I crawled through and we changed the lock. 

We did attempt to do a final walk through but the tenants left the house unlocked with keys under the mat.

I have since come to understand that as of now.. it is just barely too old for someone to buy from me with a loan.. if I could, it would be worth $225-250k... the lot itself is worth $150k+...any advise to unlocking the equity?

Of course, the depreciation is unlocked with cost segregation, which does not make sense on anything too small.

For simplicity and to avoid accidental lockout, I paired this with a decorative matching handle that has no lock, so only the deadbolt can lock/unlock the door.You could also go with something like the Schlage FE599.

I am brainstorming everyday, and trying to network, to fill in the missing piece to the puzzle, to unlock my first deal. 

Super helpful with unlocking credit cards that I could use for seed capital funds like building renovations.

I learned enough to not get taken advantage of, and also was able to unlock a fair amount of equity in my properties due to the cost savings.