Ultimately responsibly using leverage (both equity and debt), implementing systems and buying good assets with realizable equity  is how you scale while operating a sustainable real estate business.

If you are taking on debt for the STR this gets a little more complicated, but not much. 

I’d love to discuss how I could help the organization by purchasing it and restoring it to productive use.”Request a Meeting: Ask for a meeting with the person or committee responsible for property management.

I think your goal of getting your first RE investment for around $50k is doable as long as you plan to leverage debt (Loan). 

On the specifics of this 700 a month program.. its small money and if you get inspiration from it then by all means.. but so many ( not saying you of course) will go into credit card debt for this stuff.. that's no beuno .. 

You have used home equity lines of credit to purchase investment rentals and want to know the best way to pay down the HELOCs.Between the two properties you bought, after expenses, you have $250 a month positive cashflow to use.What I like to do is pay down some principal every month with my positive cashflow.I use my extra active income from real estate commissions helping other investors to pay down the principal even more which just frees up that credit for me to use again.I know I can refinance the HELOC debt before it changes to principal and interest as it is just interest only payments as yours are.One difference is the cashflow, I have greater positive cashflow and could make the principal and interest payment in the future with the extra cashflow I already enjoy.I always get HELOCs on my income properties as well after purchasing them to pull out as much of my downpayment as possible.

We have tried multiple local collection agencies, and we have not received a penny for over a hundred thousand dollars of bad debt submitted to them.We keep hearing, "It takes time" but it's been well over a year with the most recent one.

Many of the investors I know have dialed back on their private equity investment or have changed to doing debt instead of equity so it was not prime time.

Or buy and force appreciation or buy and paydown debt with cash flow..

So for example I'm very conservative and don't want any debt on them because I feel this hardens them in case of a severe recession.