But I'm hopeful that it's one leg of the stool for me that kicks in some business, and while it's not great math, I'm glad that I have already had the cost covered by transactions from leads.

My thoughts on this would be - when you're taking out all money that you have invested into a property AND the property has enough equity that any loan fees can also be covered through the refinance AND the property still cash flows, you're getting an investment with no cash of your own.  

Can try to reposition to Class B, but neighborhood may impede these efforts.Vacancy Est: Historically 10%, but 15-20% should be used to also cover tenant nonpayment, eviction costs & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores of 560-620 (approaching 22% probability of default), many blemishes, but should have no evictions in last 2 years.

I personally like long term rentals, but it sounds like the numbers don't make sense and if you cant afford to or can't justify covering that much negative cash flow then another strategy is renting by the room, that works well if you have or can convert to at least 4 or 5 bedrooms. 

You can have for example a 6 months contract, extendable, as you are not covered by long-term rental rules (neither "benefits").

Everyone covered it @Stefan St.

If they skip out on their last month of rent, you have plenty of deposit to cover it. 

To protect yourself, consider covering the electric for now, keeping a record of any payments, and adding them to the total owed when you file for eviction.

We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

If you can stomach some heavy losses in January and February (lowest revenue months in the Smokies) and May to a lesser extent, there may be better days ahead assuming this is your first STR.