Arguably, a PM company is going to have these trades available at a cheaper rate (theoretically) due to scale, but the PM company is also probably going to mark it up, so it ends up costing about the same.

At least one forum member has retired on just a few upper scale single family homes.

I have scale to an extent, maybe not enough for this, and I also have other landlords that may join me in something like this.

You could do a lot with 500k if you use financing, so usually this wouldn't be the fastest way to scale.

How quick you can scale will depend on your future work income as well as rent and equity appreciation in the property, but either way this is a good start. 

Later on you could scale up with a 1031 Exchange.

(i) The term "Insured" also includes(A) successors to the Title of the Insured by operation of law as distinguished from purchase, including heirs,devisees, survivors, personal representatives, or next of kin;(B) successors to an Insured by dissolution, merger, consolidation, distribution, or reorganization;(C) successors to an Insured by its conversion to another kind of Entity;(D) a grantee of an Insured under a deed delivered without payment of actual valuable considerationconveying the Title(1) if the stock, shares, memberships, or other equity interests of the grantee are wholly-owned by thenamed Insured,(2) if the grantee wholly owns the named Insured,(3) if the grantee is wholly-owned by an affiliated Entity of the named Insured, provided the affiliatedEntity and the named Insured are both wholly-owned by the same person or Entity, or(4) if the grantee is a trustee or beneficiary of a trust created by a written instrument established by theInsured named in Schedule A for estate planning purposes.

They argue that it is my responsibility for bill because of the scale build up and sludge.

This is how I’ve scaled up.

Before you do that, figure out how you will scale.