Does anyone know if this individual needs to be a W2 or can I hire on a 1099?

Get an attorney and get these losers out then hire a property manager to properly vet any future tenants! 

If you hire a Property Manager they can sometimes help arrange lawn and snow removal service.  

The reason you would hire a licensed professional is to assist with you not gettting SCAMMED and help you with negotiating prices and terms...based upon State Law. 

The PMS around here are pretty terrible, I've worked with a lot of the larger ones in Cleveland and I think they just take on more properties than they can effectively handle and don't hire enough additional employees to make it work. 

This could work well if you’re looking for steady monthly returns and don’t mind managing tenants (or hiring a property manager).Selling could also make sense if you’d rather use the $500,000 to diversify into other investments, like buying multiple properties or even a short-term rental on the lake as you mentioned.

This could be just specific to the real estate industry, but in both recruiting and cybersecurity consultants (hackers for hire), the ones that start their own business/consultancy, are the ones who after spending 2 years (usually exactly 2 years which is when recruiters will message them), the high performer will either 1.

Find out why, see if you can learn/hire to fix that problem, and you might have found your niche.Do you know anyone or have a family member that is licensed in one of the trades? 

We got started, but they hired an appraiser and charged me $750, while typically appraisal costs around $500.

So I can hire a PM company to just do the tenant placement part?