If you own your washers and dryers you will probably make some decent money but get ready when something breaks and the tenants want it fixed right away.If you are priced lower than the local laundromat (which most are for some reason) your tenants not only have to carry all their stuff to the Laundromat but will have to spend more money and may want you to cover it.Also a Service Tech will probably charge $100 to show up plus parts. 

If they own nothing then probably makes no sense to even spend money on attorney

These areas will require a good amount of on the ground knowledge that you probably don't want to spend the time getting. 

I would have to guess they easily spend six figures a year on marketing.

It's just like people wanting me to broker their deals as NNN investor and used to buying houses and they think 400k is lot of money then I tell them minimum for good area and commercial tenant 1 million plus down payment and 3 million and up price.In their mind it's tough to spend that kind of money.

(REPS)A real estate professional for tax purposes is someone who materially participates in real estate trades or businesses, spending more than 750 hours a year and over half of their working time on real estate activities.

you spend a lot of time trolling Pace on this Forum.  

I already a have installed a couple in the past and I spend about $225 on each for annual flushing and cleaning.

My recommendation is to start by truly understanding what owning your properties in an LLC will do for you before spending money on entity formation and the subsequent transactional costs.

If you want to buy in a better area then you might be spending more on a down payment and have less to buy furnishing for an STR.