Reading your post make me more confident in staying away from STR at the momeent. 

Following David Green's Core 4 strategy (realtor, contractor, property manager, and lender) gives confidence to invest anywhere.

It helps you find reliable property management partnerships and gives you everything you need to make confident hiring decisions, like:Expert Matching: Match with professionals who meet your criteriaExtra Assurance: Licenses, experience, ratings, reviews, and more that can be cross-checked with BiggerPockets membersBonus Content: Receive an essential interactive workbook: “How to Interview Property Management Companies”

I'd feel more confident looking at someone's existing Real Estate portfolio, examine their values, cost basis, rent rolls, occupancy rates, history of cash-flows, and taxable dynamic, to properly assess return potential.

i think a lot of this is my confidence in this shaky market. 

It helps you find reliable property management partnerships and gives you everything you need to make confident hiring decisions, like:Expert Matching: Match with professionals who meet your criteriaExtra Assurance: Licenses, experience, ratings, reviews, and more that can be cross-checked with BiggerPockets membersBonus Content: Receive an essential interactive workbook: “How to Interview Property Management Companies”

I had a few appraisals come back from Akron/Clv markets and had the appraiser comment that it is a "down market".If you are targeting the 50k purchases with the 20k rehab and then hopping to refi out afterward you are taking a gamble because if you do not get the 100k value after the rehab you can get stuck in the project or be forced to take a mortgage with a terrible rate.Keep your purchases 80k and up and try to make sure your project costs are over 100k on everything so you can be pretty confident that you'll get the 100k value afterward.

It likely would be on a smaller scale as these were not first time investor purchases (total of $4m value).When I was purchasing 2012 to 2018, I had a lot of confidence the prices were going to rise.  

In the second consultation where I was quoted a fee of $24,750, I was told because the team is so confident that they can reduce my taxes several times over, they are willing to offer me a 100% satisfaction guarantee. 

It's a slow start but I am confident that I can succeed.