House hacking could possibly at least cut that painful expense so not saying you shouldn't do but really watch your numbers.

Try to find out what the seller's pain point is.

We've all probably felt a little pain this year with rents and longer vacancies due to all the inventory coming online, something like 50,000 units in 2024...so plenty of vacancy and free rent while those get leased up. 

I would just add that probate isn't really a painful process in most situations.

Quote from @Garrett Brown: What is your biggest pain point with STRs right now?

Tracking hours would be kind of a pain as we tend to do a lot of partial-hour type of work like a quick phone convo or texting back and forth with a buyer client, researching properties, talking to listing agents and lenders, scheduling showings, previewing properties, travel time, etc.

Getting the lower unit separately metered seems like a pain.

As I studied earlier, the first thing you should do is marketing, then get a call and do a property analysis to understand if it's profitable for you, then meet with the seller and sign all the necessary papers, then if there is a debt in the bank we do a reinstatement quote, then do a title search to check if there are any hidden debts, if everything is fine we look for an investor or flipper and sign an assignment of contract with him and wait for closing to get our money.

In researching it sounded like Delta was going through some changes/growing pains in that area.

It seems that often when companies acquire large books of business in one shot there are growing pains and unfortunately those are felt at the client level.