I respect your opinion and it is readily apparent that you are educated in investment real estate, but I would like to hopefully change your outlook about an industry that has a lot of hard working people with the main focus of providing a long-term investment with a service to help alleviate the active involvement with the process that some people associate stress with in regards to real estate investing.Before I address your points, I would like to mention that every industry unfortunately has companies that are not as trust-worthy, or are in it for the wrong reasons focusing on a deal by deal mentality, which sets these companies up for a very short life-span.

The cap ex numbers were derived from a spreadsheet that I had on each property until I hit maybe dozen or so units that had expected cost divided by expected life span of each cap ex item. 

If you decide to go the STR route, I chose the same path as I'm closing on my 4th property next week in the span of 14 months.

What I would do is have something in writing as part of the offer that my bid is based on the systems in working order (or some estimated life span left)We will spend $30k to inspect them all and if any are deemed required to be replaced we will credit X at closing.

I typically use a certain $ per unit per month for capex, remember this is to cover the cost of major improvements, so you can estimate the costs to replace major systems and divide that by expected life span as a methodical approach to come up with something.

You can search Air (and VRBO, don't forget the original platform) for any time span you want.

. $6000/10 year life span/12 months = $50 per month for 1 item in a capex budget.

Also, betting on appreciation for a short span (2 years) sounds too risky, as there's a lot of volatility that can happen in just 2 years.

I work with Suicide Prevention Action Network USA (SPAN) as a counselor for young Kids and young adult over here in Fulton, KY, who try or want to commit suicide due to one pressure or the other .

I then converted my prior primary residence and the conversion spanned two tax years so I'm getting a little buried in the tax paperwork.