Remember to save some money for capital repairs.

2 are not cashflowing with the required expenses for vacancy at 10%, repairs at 10% and capital expenditures at 5%.

The current owner bought it for $30K and I know they had to clean up a lot of title work and started doing repairs. 

I can't speak to what time these slobs left as I don't require notice but the cleaner was there promptly.  

Additionally house tenants bring more of their own appliance, like refrigerator, washer and dryer; which means tenants are responsible for repair and replacement of their own appliances. 

The reason the answer is framed this way is because when you take a HELOC out to make repairs on your personal residence, you are allowed to tax the interest deduction on your Schedule A of your 1040 income tax return.

Using automation can certainly help at scale for easy things, but if you have one STR and can't be bothered to respond promptly to your guest, I can guarantee this business will not go well for you.

Based on an inspection report on one of the deals I worked on last year, I was able to negotiate over $15k of credits and repairs for a $200k house using a $400 inspection report for one of my clients.

., mortgage interest, taxes, repairs, depreciation) on Schedule E starting when the property is placed in service.

It's a good practice to overestimate costs and underestimate after-repair values (ARV) to keep your expectations realistic.