Upon visiting the house, I found everything to be cheap and poorly done.

It's cheap and doesn't give them your house address.

We found a cheap rental rehab home and and I'm trying to come up the best way to structure the operating agreement.  

And in their quest to get to that they turn to high cashflow properties, which is another way of saying cheap hood properties.

Definitely with study, makes no sense to cheap out.

Part of my issue was not having a reasonably priced handyman ahead of time and eventually overpaying to just get it done and also inexperience as a manager.With that said, you essentially have two options: very cheap properties in less good areas (you're looking at 100k or less--which you might have trouble getting a good lender for)  or trying to do some sort of house hack (e.g. live in flip, live in rent by the room, multifamily) where you budget will be closer to 200k-300k.Personally, I would not look at real estate until you are maxing out your 401k and IRA, but lots of folks have done significantly better with real estate than stocks and would think I'm crazy for suggesting this.

It's very important to have a good PM and not go cheap or there's a high chance your rental will get poorly managed and you'll lose money in the long run. 

Brand new 1 Trip cargo containers are going dirt cheap right now. 

I do have folks that don't book because of that.That is a good thing as not understanding the distance to get places will create bad blood and cause those 2 and 3 star reviews which no one wants to see.Like @John Underwood, our place isn't cheap so we don't get the folks that destroy places.The bottom line is that you are renting out an expensive asset to strangers for 3-10 days or whatever.

Cheap easy Value Add.