But also, you have a dining table and 6 chairs, with 4 at the bar.

If so, can additional funds be brought to the table to fund the new property's down payment?

I would not say STRs are off the table, but there is much hotter markets for sure, but I firmly believe STRs are quality driven products so opportunity strike where an investor is willing to meet it. 

Personally I do still enjoy a good in person meeting - if you are looking for a relationship it is just hard to beat sitting down across the table from someone.  

   ( now you may think, I dont want to leave money on the table  if I can do my own marketing)    My suggestion is to leverage from others first , you might be loosing more by trying to figure out than just pay an assignment fee.. 

Invest in the Dominican Republic:The Dominican Republic is one of the leaders in the entire Caribbean in terms of tourism, livestock, agriculture, and industries and will also be the Hublogistic in Punta CanaIf we make a comparison between other countries that have good tax benefits and return on investment, we can talk about these topics in a Zoom meeting where I can show you a graph of the tax benefits, return on investment, a natural and forced appreciation table that guarantees a defense against economic inflation and in favor of covering your capital+ The most important thing is the location when acquiring your property, you are not buying a house or an apartment, you are acquiring a location with development or in development that guarantees your investment+Each property has a number and our task as investors is to discover which is the appropriate number that can give us the return on investment that we are looking for.

If we bought a new primary with cash at say $1 mil we could still have money to put into index funds or something.I realize it's leaving money on the table by not leveraging all of the sale into more rentals but being in California it's pretty tough to pencil out rental returns to have good cash flow.

friends and family will not want to pay market rent. you will be leaving a lot of money on the table.

With dad absent for most of my childhood (for reasons unbeknownst to me), my mom did everything she could to keep the bills paid, a roof over our heads, and food on the table.

i would leverage the cash just in case the next deal comes across your table and you're in need of aquisition funds