Can you handle all that if you have to eat from those profits?

Then I would shoot for areas that appreciate the most, because when leveraging the 5% down.. appreciation will bring you the most profits. 

Making a decent profit has everything to do with the right market...each and every one is different in guest avatar, ADR, and yearly revenue...the property itself, and the host and how knowledgeable they are on the STR industry right now because that is also an ever-changing landscape!  

Say you profit $200/month and you have a $20k HELOC. 100+ months to pay it off - not a good idea. 

The Roth IRA and his money partner agreed to split the profits 50/50.

Make sure your first property has no long-term cap ex coming like roofs, furnaces, sewer, etc so you know you won't get a 10k bill when you buy another one and lose profit on all across the board.

Have you thought about the types of properties you want to invest in and the strategy you want to use to make a profit via said property?

One side of the highway can be more profitable than the other. 

Values drop, sometimes drastically, rents go down as quality of tenant declines; cost of operstimg properties increase, and governmental interference, especially in the form of rent control, can slash values and profitability severely. 

Turnovers crush profits, so I keep these people in for cheap and they don’t bother me for much.