Hopefully this will work well for you but I'm not sure the it's the ideal destination for the newbie real estate investor though.Since you asked us to share our successes, I'll take the example of Mexico, who has had a very different attitude towards foreign investors.

Be careful....if the attitude is turning against STRs, it won't take much for a simple HOA to just follow along....This really doesn't sound all that good to be honest.

Long story short, he's been working on this other house (very slowly) and a "few months" has now been almost 3 years and I've been ready to get rid of him for 2+ years now, but the problem is I have a gut feeling that if I gave them notice (they are m2m), that he would retaliate and damage the unit on purpose (He has a world is against me attitude, nothings my fault type of guy).

Like other experienced flippers have said, their attitude towards the fixes could smell trouble for the quality of other things we can’t see on the surface. 

My attitude is definitely geared more towards taking action than sitting on the sidelines.

I suggest leaving the situation as it is and waiting for the tenant to change his attitude.

Usually my attitude is to put as low of a DP as possible to minimize the amount of $ that gets parked in equity, have more cash to invest, and have that debt serve as an inflation hedge...but it's so expensive to borrow right now and our PITI would be so high if we only put 3.5% or 5% - might have to change the strategy.

I still post here daily, but my posts have really dropped off, the reason is that the wholesale circus train is full and it's a runaway train that hurts the public as well as the unknowing newbie that has nothing more than a dream and naive attitudes of how to succeed."

You are in CA so the market and attitudes towards solar may be different there but I just don't see it paying off on a rental, especially one where you are not the one paying utilities. 

The tenant paid his rent on-time, but he had a serious bad attitude when he spoke to my wife about the dog and his girlfriend.