That said, I'm considering selling the property to cut my losses before they happen.

The much larger group 1 is the people who are naive and due to their lack of knowledge, experience, and possibly limited capacity, get “suckered” by the scammers.The smaller group 2 are those that understand but don’t care if they’re part of an unethical undertaking as long as they make money themselves.  

I represent a lot of buyers in Tampa, and some hire me for full service PM, limited service PM, and some self manage. 

While you shouldn’t categorize all tenants and it’s the landlords responsibility to properly screen, the tenants who reside in better situated housing and pay higher rents are more financially responsible meaning lower rate of rent loss and will generally take better care of the property which combined will result in less time allocated towards management functions if self-performed or more favorable management fee structures if 3rd party management companies are utilized (which ties back to #1, as well).

I brought my nephew with me for about 12 of my trips last year and I am much more limited this year, but I have been pretty much running the shadow management(managing the PMs as my co-assistant with another gal) on about 3 of our STRs and 2 of our LTRs so he has his hands full.

North of Austin, the county regulations say you don't have to do it IF you're only doing residential, certain lot sizes and limiting the impervious cover of each lot.

In my limited exposure to using PMs in Memphis (I self-manage), most had a scale of upcharge depending on the cost of the service. 

More work with more risk but can get you going if limited funds until growing into bigger deals.I am still on this site but stay very busy so not on here as much. 

Keep in mind the following: 1) If you don't have enough cash for the entire purchase in the TSP rollover to IRA, your financing options would be limited to a non-recourse loan.

I don’t want to limit myself to any investment endeavor if it’s a good fit, but also don’t want to put the time and effort into becoming a real estate agent if there isn't a decent list of pros to doing so while investing.