My wife and I do have a fairly modest lifestyle.

If any portion of the building or structure is occupied by the taxpayer, the gross rental income from the property must includes the fair rental value of the unit occupied by the taxpayer.IRC 168(e) defines a dwelling unit as “a house or apartment used to provide living accommodations.

I am not a plumber, but I have had my fair share of this, and most of the time, you can hire a plumber to snake & jet the line.

A "Fed Coin" is a possibility for the future as they try to find a way to maintain control over money. 

Anyways, we felt like what they had to offer for management seemed fair and we still wanted to proceed to use them even though we did not have a good experience with Michael Azzam. 

Sure it can be a write off, but my question is if it is the highest and best use of your time (or the given employees time) to be running a skid steer - transporting it, storage, maintenance, cleaning, etc, and if it still makes sense if you need to hire someone to run it for you and take care of the other things.Add up all those recurring costs - maintaining the machine, maintaining the trailer, having a large enough truck to tow it, insurance and registration for all of the above, your time or your employees time related to all of the above...even at $14k a year it might be attractive enough to keep paying that and having them drop it off at the job site for you.A brand new machine could easily cost you over 6 figures - that's 7 years of rentals at $14k/year before including all the holding costs. 

Sometimes these insurance contracts come in legal sized paper- possibly a harbinger of what you'll need to do to collect fairly from them, But always expect them to perform completely on the things which are in their financial favor.

Let's say, 10% on average. 25% x (1-.1)= 22.5% average STR fee.Average those two, and you get a little less than 18%, so 15% seems like a "fair" fee

Maintain control of your rental.

The manager by action or inaction could be sued directly or in addition to the property owner for a tenant or guest being injured.There is an additional liability extension called personal injury or landlord personal injury that picks up the liability for a situation such as being sued for wrongful eviction or violating fair housing in some way.