I recommend looking at Furnished Finder, Airbnb and Zillow for comparable MTRs in the area to understand pricing and the level of furnishings you need to be competitive. 

I've run the numbers on homes in our price range within a 3hr drive radius of our zip and they just don't make sense as rental units.I'm fluent in Spanish so other than the financing problem maintaining a rental in Costa Rica vs another market in the USA that requires a flight is fairly comparable from my perspective.Its funny because buying a sub 70k house anywhere in the US would be so easy for us.

They would have paid about $1500 a month in rent, but could buy a place where mortgage and property taxes were comparable. 

My first rationale is the smaller homes will attract the type of tenet I’d prefer compared to the larger home I currently own which would be larger families.

We ended up going the HELOC route on that property for a few reasons. 1) the interest at the time was only 5%, which although seemed high, didn't matter too much with our potential property showing a 18% ROI 2) we leveraged a second home loan with 10% down for that new property, so our HELOC withdrawal was relatively small compared to what would be needed for a traditional loan on a rental. 3) I dont think I will see the rates in the 2% again in my lifetime, so figured I should hold on to that "free money" instead of selling it. 

Very few comparable properties in my markets have them, so I want to put myself in rare company. 

Check out different lenders, compare their rates and terms, and read reviews to make sure that you’re working with a reputable company.

There were 3130 homes for sale in the month of june compared to 2818 homes for sale in May of 2024.

I'm curious to learn more about the experiences and outcomes of using this approach compared to short-term and long-term rentals.I’d love to understand which strategy might work best for me.

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.