There's plenty of great and smart people on here and in our local area that can offer advice, but I would offer two things:1.  

I am seeking advice on what would be a smart next step for me.

If I worked a true full time+ job where I couldn't pull my phone out or take a call whenever I please then I would gladly farm it out, but since I usually can I will gladly pay myself $60-100/hour to self manage from a smart phone. 

“All these folks are very educated and very smart, but they’re not necessarily educated in finance,” he says.Some investors admit they hadn’t vetted their investments that closely, saying they didn’t read the pages of documents outlining the investment terms.

So you can take that off the table.Buying an investment property first would be smart, but you can actually set yourself up with a unique option if you do it correctly.

They haven't been a maintenance issue other than the glass shades once getting broken which I was able to replace with used shades from a used construction material store like Habitat for Humanity.

A smart lock on wifi with no intervening Zigbee/Z-Wave or Matter hub will eat up battery power.

I would tell you to get really, really smart on self-storage, mobile home parks, or something that can be run by a low-skilled employee and pretty hands-off. 

I was losing my offers to mostly all-cash buyers, and also they were going higher than I wanted with their offers (usually because I had a ROI in mind) - I was not smart because I think I was thinking the low rates would last a while.

Generally, I find that anyone spending a ton of time on one property decisions are not usually worth the time, but you are smart be seeking guidance.