I would start speaking with residential / commercial agents and property management companies close by and get a feeling if something closer by will meet your criteria.

Does the operational company already exist and have income history?

Also any tips for automating this as much as possible and how to protect the property financially and property management would be appreciated.I ALMOST understand the rental arbitrage strategy if building a company scaling with say 30 + units and looking for high short term cash flow.  

Travel nurses are making bank and sometimes I think the locums companies provide lodging.

I did but each company I worked with has been bought or sold since then.

From there, I would like to consider a 1031 exchange in the future to acquire more units.My current property management company suggested that they could handle a mid sized apartment building but I would absolutely not consider them for it as I believe they have overextended themselves and communication is lacking.

Suncoast is a very big company.  

I've asked my clients a similar question and have developed tools for them to minimize this, but I find there are a few different types of clients.Manager managed - these folks have no issues as they simply upload their year end statement from their property manager, their 1098 mortgage statement and any other one-off expenses they may have paid for outside of the management company. 

A person who has spent his 2000 to 4000 minimum CPA practice hours doing foreign currency conversions at Deloitte for a Belgian energy company may not know the first thing about real estate or anything else.

Go search the topic "Lifestyle Asset University" here on Bigger Pockets and you will see a longer thread with a lot of opinions (most are not members) but still worth a read as there are a half a dozen paid members from our group who have commented on that thread.We were formerly called Lifestyle Asset University, but I didn't realize that you couldn't use the word University in your company name here in Utah so we changed our name to Vodyssey.