Of the IRA money I spent $120k on the remodel.

You can attend all the REIAs and read all the books and sign up for all the conferences, and spend all the money, and you are will never really know you can do it until you do.Over 20 years in real estate in various forms and roles, action will beat out intelligence or education or even network 100% of the time.  

Risk goes hand in hand with the amount of money you stand to make.  

They will save you time and money. 

I do own two triplexes in Scranton, and I will say the one issue is that you are going to be taking care of the utilities normally if they are not on separate meters, which could take a good amount of money away from your overall cash flow. 

The predicament we are in is the property is not in the condition to charge that much for rent and we would also leave a lot of money in the deal once we refinance if we cannot get in there to fix it up.

Sure it does. but depending on who the celebrity is/was.....That's why so many little hotels, boarding houses, vacation rentals, etc..... feature this in their advertising.And in some cases, you will not get more money, but you will get more guests.A little while ago, I went to Tombstone AZ and stayed in 'The first boarding house in Tombstone'....really cool place but kinda small and, well....old feeling.

We are considering stepping in and trying to buy the place, but looking for some guidance on STR and what kind of money this place can bring in. 

The algorithm has no idea if the problem as a dysfunctional layout or just the fact that it is dated and nobody has spent the money to update the property.  

Unfortunately almost every franchise involves renting the occupied space when the property would have made more money than the business.