I'm planning to build a very tiny STR, and I haven't been able to find any off-the-shelf plans that I really like.

Basically, it's a house from 1910 in bad shape (low ceilings, uneven floor, strange cellar/basement, tiny rooms). it's about 1500/sq feet in Old Town.

Among the nation’s stock of 99.5 million residential properties, zombie properties continue to represent just a tiny fraction – only one of every 13,100 homes.

Seems a tiny amount

I’ve heard of people renting a spot in an RV to park with their tiny home/rv/airstream as a STR but have been calling around lately and have been getting shut down. 

Similarly, whether the market is likely to appreciate/ hold steady / depreciate would also be important considerations...obviously, you'd approach a seller in a tiny dead town differently than a seller in a thriving city with 25% appreciation....we don't know if these properties are in the middle of Kansas or the middle of Manhattan, which makes it difficult to zero in on the best strategy....what others mentioned about patience could be a good strategy in some markets, but patience might not a good strategy if there are thousands of other buyers circling around...Also, the finances, priorities, goals and fears of the seller would be important factors to help you determine the best approach...for instance, a seller with little equity, poor cashflow, no appreciation, tons of impending capex bills, and bad tenants would obviously be a different deal than a seller with all properties paid off, excellent cashflow, excellent appreciation, no capex projects on the horizon, and A+ tenants. 

@Don Konipol how about turning malls into tiny apartments?

I'm looking at reinvesting this money into real estate in a way that provides a substantial tax write off.I am very interested in constructing a new, short-term rental tiny home.

I just started my research on tiny houses.

Hi Andrew,Since you want her input/agreement on this to move ahead, why not just ask her if she has any problem with you doing it by yourself.But realize if you go down in the flames of huge financial loss, she might (a) be mad at you, or (b) divorce you (seen that happen more than a few times when losses occurred).If you were going to set up one of those tiny electric train sets (Because you brought up "On Board") would she want to do that with you too--probably not.Good Luck!