You can too, without being a wholesaler or an agent.You can walk into a mall to a jewelry store and buy gold, which is simple, but you pay a huge markup.

Since you are doing new construction I would suggest making them private enough where guest have minimal interaction with each other.

Professional Status: Could you qualify as a Real Estate Professional?

You mentioned that you are not a W-2, but that is not the only status of income producing individuals. 

You will not only achieve a status upgrade in the market of RE investing, you are given the opportunity to have the knowledge to back it up.

I've got perfect feedback and great guest reviews on my STR but I'm better at running LTR.

Quote from @JD Martin: If you have found people willing to lend you - someone with I assume no experience doing this, since you're here asking the question - 100% of the costs of such an endeavor for half the profits, you have found a gold mine and should look no further.

Or next meeting is Feb 20th, and we have some guest speakers coming to talk about DST investing and 1031/721 Exchange 

Off grid sounds cool to some, but it really limits your potential guest pool.

I use Jurny as my PMS to help me process guests.