Can anyone suggest beach markets in SC and/or GA that allow STRs and cash flow with 20% down?

Happy to chat...being a local GC takes out a lot of the risk of the biggest variable for most investors (unpredictable rehab costs) and also allows you to consider more options than the average investor, with your rehab costs being significantly lower.

My uncle has agreed to allow me to use his system, employees and resources to build my own trailer park empire.

It sounds like some lender will allow you to get a 2nd mortgage for that $172K amount and some will not.Does anyone know of any lenders that can work with this?

When we spoke, I alerted you to the need to make the quick repairs, and you agreed to allow access to the space to get things back to top shape.

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?

This was my first property, and while it's been a great learning experience, I made several mistakes along the way—ranging from choosing a realtor who was more focused on closing the deal than finding the right house to having a poor inspection and overlooking issues hidden beneath the surface (literally).

I would recommend targeting 30 day minimum rentals (Most associations are 90+), allowing 12+ rentals per year (most allow 1-3), and no in-person screening for tenants required.

Despite my concerns, I allowed the appraisal to proceed.

They don't allow auto payments or automatically add late fees, and tenants would have the option to pull their payment back, which is not ideal.