So hopefully within 5 years we will have made our money back and be pure profit from there.

For our next STR, we are going pure profit mode.

This is purely private sector and free market.

Most people waste $30k every year on pure crap they don't need like $7 drinks at Starbucks every day.

We have spent the past few weeks since this post discussing things and looking at deals that come up in the area, and have since decided to purely focus on a single family for our first out of state purchase (as clearly MF in that range weren't going to work).

Sometimes, especially with a side-by-side duplex in a decent area, the tenants for a 2F can have a little better mindset and can settle in for the long haul more.I think 2Fs will have steadier demand through different market cycles, again because a good portion of their buyers are owner-occupants looking for an in-law apartment, while selling a 3F could be tougher in phases of the market where there are fewer pure investors out there.It also depends on your personal situation.

Home was purchased as an estate sale in original 1960s condition, there's ample equity given that I made several updates, some as pure sweat equity. 

Is this a property you intend to use for your family and offset/earn income with rentals or is this a place that's purely an investment? 

There is no other business other than real estate that has made so many millionaires, even without trying and even investing blindly with no prior experience and not much more education than being able to draw the image of a fish to sign their name.What I am seeing is, "some people who accidentally made a little money in the real estate business think they are pretty smart and a high percent of the gurus selling their services did only one or two small deals and the results may have only been pure luck.

But don't worry about tiling outside of the shower on the walls - that's not really needed, even in homes over $500k - purely a design choice, and the same look can be accomplished with wainscoting.