It really depends on you and how involved you're willing to be, especially if any of your current at-large operators don't work out.

Travel expenses to look at potential investment properties are generally not tax-deductible unless you operate a real estate portfolio like a business. 2.

That's why you are seeing Turbo tax is also not allowing to claim depreciation unit its put in service.But you can claim start-up expenses for your rental property upto $5K on your operating expenses.

.- trusts - deeding each property to a separate land trust each and then the land trusts in turn grant beneficiary to an operating LLC.

For the better part of two decades I've been involved in real estate in some capacity including but not limited to: mortgage & real estate broker, developer, project manager, STR owner/operator/manager, international investor and beyond. 

After operating the STR for the first year can we turn the STR into our primary residence for 2 years then sell and avoid capital gains tax and depreciation recapture instead of doing a 1031 exchange?

Then I would say that the main challenge for you will be finding trustworthy, experienced operators who are going to give you repeat business and who have a track record of successful project executions. 

I own, operate, and live in the state of my LLC but I have clients all over the country/world. 

Regional hospital in Denison, Two huge casinos in Oklahoma and a number of smaller ones, Four TI chip plants under construction, and they already have a plant there now, but not sure what it makes, Tyson foods factory (I think chicken), airport that I would think gets some cargo service (but no passenger service yet). 

Since I list some of my (very few - I only have 3 residential units and my commercial ones are all managed by others) units every 2-3 years, I forget how to do it, and even standard operating procedures change a lot at that frequency, rendering them much less useful.