Even including modest appreciation and equity pay down, the ROI is between 7% and 12% for a non passive holding (not good for an active holding)I can easily afford this level of negative, but do I want to?

You can likely find some of these close to where you live and can more easily find deals on these.

So, once you start finding actual deals and can easily present them as deals to others, you can decide whether to:1) Wholesale for quick cash.

. - Projects give us visibility on my projects- My CPA can easily access the reports for tax preparation.

Overall, it’s an excellent solution for smaller portfolios because you can easily spot any discrepancies.

We also get to enjoy our place as often as we like (the slightly lower occupancy rate due to our use is also a factor in being cash flow negative) and the negative cash flow is offset easily by the equity we'd gain, even assuming only a 2% appreciation on the cabin. 

On these lower priced type properties why don't investors simply invest with a group local to them in larger properties that are more expensive where they live or simply invest maybe the next state or so over so you can easily travel there?

We can’t profitably turn it into a LTR, or easily anything else.Desirability - well two favors balance out.

I saw the list almost a year ago and we started working on fixing every issue we could that was on the list so that we would easily pass when the inspection day came.

Depending on how upscale your finishes really were, you could have that built in this market for 300 to 325 per square foot fairly easily right now.