I currently work with investors looking to build their portfolio with single-family, long-term rentals while managing for them on the back end, making is hands-free for the investor to still work their W-2 job and live their everyday lives and spend it with family, hobbies, etc. 

I took the next 5 months to tackle everything myself spending approximately 17k in supplies and tools + paying a plumber and roofer 4k total to fix those issues.

GC in my area cost 10% of the total and I would say that is worth it for what they provide, but if you have the knowledge and willingness to be on the phone with subs (and spend a lot of time on site) you could save that by DIYing it.

My regret is not buying one in Hawaii or somewhere else where my family could spend some vacation time.

So if I understand this correctly, by qualifying to extend the 5 year rule to 10 yrs, $250k if single or $500k if married of proceeds from this sale would be exempt from capital gains? 

If anyone spends any time in Europe, barely any jurisdiction impose these limitations on homeowners/builders yet people live in much smaller spaces... and very happily.

And you use a cleaning lady who spends 5 hours to reset the property for the next guest.

The reason I asked about the amount is I see people always searching for the "perfect note" when they had 100 opportunities pass right by and spend thousands to buy 5 loans a year which they could have done little work and still found similar loansWe buy non performing to get them reperforming and we also have some shorter term RTL's (performing) for cash flow purposes.

On average, you will spend 10% of your income on maintenance per year.

I've had some investments perform better than others but section 8 rentals were the one that were most challenging to sustainably operate and my worst performers over an extended period of time.