Location is a huge factor in pricing and even though your home was renovated nicely, $300 more than the top average is significant. 

One hurdle you may have depending on location is zoning approval.

Would love to hear from the community on tips to get started and best locations to find my first property.

Obviously some property types and locations are doing better than others. 

There are a lot of owners that have great purchase prices and 3 to 4% Interest rates that bought 5, 10 or more years ago.If you want to jump into the STR market game now in competitive markets you better run your numbers conservatively and you need an appealing location and property to be competitive. 

If you do a 200 unit minimum A location it will be worth at least $1mm more than cost on day one with no occupants.  

Investing in good locations where people want to live and have good jobs to go to results in far fewer evictions.

Where are you located?

@Craig Bowman Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a Class A property in Class D area, what quality of tenant will you get?

A zoning board meeting and vote is required for a variance approval and is usually rejected due to local political opposition.Also, there might be problems with files from 1915 and it took me 3 visits before they were able to locate the files and see the original plans.