Studies have shown that guests don't want to book for a full week anymore, they'll pay more per night for a shorter vacation of 3 or 4 nights. 

If the numbers don't work with it then don't force it and don't rush it.Always ask for full or partial owner financing the answer will sometimes surprise you.We just bought a property with 5k down and owner financing the rest at zero percent.

I’d like to buy the place, renovate it, and then live in it for a few years as my primary while renting out the 2/1, and then ultimately selling or renting out the main house too. wondering what the best purchase strategy would be considering I don’t have the full purchase price in cash on hand?

Are you just short of the $600k meaning you have like $550k or are you the full $600k short.

BiggerPockets is full of resources designed to help you along your journey, whether you are just getting started or a seasoned investor.

But as Dominic mentioned this will be full doc Move your liquidity to that bank as deposits are critical to these types of lenders..

.: It sounds like you have a great system down, and I am sure that you can find some handymen that are in the area doing part-time work and then working at a day job that could be pushed into full-time work on your properties.

They are full size and yet still run off 120v and just need a water source and drain. 

And if all houses have not been fully rehabbed (we do fulls on every buy), some expected number for capital expenses should be included in that (IE if you have 3 years left on your roof you need to be deducting $X from that figure, repeat ad nauseum for all major capex).

There is nothing about how long you need to occupy the property for.So unless our lender puts a demand on us I see no problems legally in occupying each property for any amount of time to fulfill the requirement, then rinse and repeating this process up to our full entitlements, so long as the lender is willing to keep giving us loans.