If all goes well, I'm building the courage to surrender to the challenge. 

This could be happening to you as well. 

I have a few areas in mind that would appreciate nicely as well in the Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe areas. 

My wife and I thought we had an easy opportunity for a double (baseball analogy) with a flip home in Lakeland, TN we were able to get well below market this past summer.

Imagine you only do 1/3rd as well as they did.

Be sure to explore all around the forums as well as many of the FREE tools that Bigger Pockets provides.I am on the lending side of things and am always happy to hop on a call to discuss loan options that are out there, even if not offered by my resources.

Well, here goes nothing.

if you were only going to rent out a portion of the house as an STR that portion would have to be worth more than your exchange as well.

I'm fairly new in the industry as well, and most of the sources I've checked at first require a subscription (CoStar, WSJ), but I found this newsletter called Zeroflux Real Estate who consolidate real estate news from such sites.

If they are nice enough for AirBnB, then you are probably ok there as well since the stays will be short.