The more properties you walk and the more industry conversations you have, the better you’ll get at identifying these opportunities.

The key is identifying a home that is not cookie-cutter.

I navigate through cities and towns, identifying areas that are both friendly and challenging for STRs.

The labor is cheap but is usually terrible quality.You have very little insight into the governments plans for development and i have seen that have amazing impact on some areas and terrible impact on others.If you are going through with the purchase i wish you good luck and urge you to consider traffic patterns.

You can identify a replacement property within 45 days and close in 180.

I thought this could be a good way to take inventory of other situations landlords experienced and make proactive updates to our leases without having to first experience the same fact pattern.

I found similar patterns between all 5 companies: namely, they had taken on too many units, were over-charging me for things I didn't need, and weren't handling issues correctly (they would send out vendors who didn't know what they were doing, mis-diagnose issues etc.)No disrespect to the PMs on this chain or BP in general, but any third-party manager won't perform exactly the way you would like them to simply because of the constraints they are faced with as far as having so many units and owners to keep tabs on. 

Create a simple spreadsheet or written list to compare the features of each and identify the ones that align with your requirements.

*As a side note, I think maybe it would be fun also to try and identify where new technology or machine-learning driven approaches could increase efficiency in the spaceAs for my financial situation, personally, I have around 50k saved but 20k of it is tied up in assets I don't want to pay capital gains tax on.

Usually a pattern will emerge on a 'normal' deal in your area.