Due to the market conditions I wanted to have a good amount of equity in the building so I only refi'd 50% of the purchase.

I have a friend here who has about 140 houses right now, who I was discussing return on equity with.

You are a high w2 earner, The house is worth 110k today, you are buying from your grandma for 60k in exchange for free rent for life, upside ARV of 200k.The costs of owning the house will help provide tax relief on your high w2 earnings, you are buying a great chunk of equity that will pay off in the future, and you and your grandma are doing each other solids. 

To preface, I have my real estate license and generally pull a list of presumed high equity(purchased more than 10 years ago), absentee owners in my target market and send out about 3000-4000 postcards or letters every 6 weeks or so. 

Does anyone have experience of setting up a STR while in the same position? 

On crime... one positive trend is that APD, in partnership with the courts, has lowered the previously skyrocketing murder rate.

@Elijah Berg ‘a lot of sweat equity in 1 week’’?

This will let you capture equity as well as make it easer to cashflow. 

Investment: $124.2K; ROI: 73%/year; 10-year equity: $1.46M; Total cash return: $1.45M. 10-year equity multiple: 10x on $124K investment.

I love it here because there are still positive cashflowing deals and lots of appreciation potential due to the strong job market, growing population, and major companies setting up shop here like Intel, Meta, Amazon, etc.