Did you include all of your marketing and management costs in your model, such as AirBnB/VRBO-type fees, cleaning, vehicle costs, maintenance, etc.?

Which causes investors to come in and buy them up and clean out the properties, which cause people to move back in.

We will usually comp cleaning fee or give gift cards to local restaurant to comp any legitimate issues.

Bled all over linens, let kids rub slime into carpets, stabbed coach with a knife. 

(Carpet vs LVP etc).

you should read more into low income housing. if the place is already beat up, just clean it up. low income housing is constant management. fix it up. 

Just major stuff that would end up costing me more than the cleaned up land would be worth.

If you have a great bookkeeper, that will help keep costs down, but my guess is that he is spending some time cleaning up the financial statements.

I mean once you talk to them, it's pretty easy to spot if they know what they are talking about.I've work on STRs before and to be honest, it is not the most fun aspect of accounting because the volume of allocating income from all sources (airbnb, vrbo, stripe, direct booking, and so on) to a bunch of random expenses (cleaning, supplies, repairs, advertising, commissions, and all typical real estate expenses).I had to strictly rely on the client's input on what the expenses belong to which property or even units, if the paperwork doesn't say. 

Zillow says it’s worth over 500k, but there are things wrong with it: The pellet stove needs a new tiny door to work, two sliding doors are off kilter, needs some cleaning and the deck could use painting.