Capacity and Tolerance. 1) Capacity: how many people can you comfortably fit in the property, is there room to add more, or add more value to the tenants to increase rent.2) Tolerance: How many people are you comfortable living with, if there are vacancies are you able to handle that.House hacking is an amazing path to homeownership, and a nice low barrier to entry into self managing your properties.

If you are open to value add strategy, small multis have potential for not only traditional forced appreciation but also the ability to see major rent increases.  

Assuming you go the HELOC route, another option to reduce your costs assuming you have decent credit is to look at credit card balance transfer promotions.Back in 2003-2004 I had HELOCs on my investment properties and interest rates were increasing.

You really shouldn’t be running your business on a stranger googling answers for you but…the google says:  Depending on the rental agreement, Georgia landlords typically must provide a 60-day notice for lease renewals or terminations, while tenants generally need to give only a 30-day notice for lease termination.Jan 18, 2024If a new lease is not signed, and the landlord continues to accept monthly rent, the terms of the original lease still apply, except the landlord is required to give sixty (60) days' notice before she can terminate the lease or change the terms, and you (the tenant) are required to give thirty (30) days' notice before leaving.So you can’t non-renew until the end of April and you can’t even increase the rent until then.

So demand for travel is lowering back to historic levels while the supply of STRs in many markets has increased by a lot.

@Quan Pham have you investigated at all the potential increases in property taxes and home insurance (need to have landlord policy) and included them in your cashflow calcluations?

Unfortunately, Covid decided to change my plans, and I made the decision to hold off, in hindsight it was a huge mistake and no one could have imagined that property values could have increased at such a high rate.

If you know that something major will need replacement in the future, increase the monthly amount you are depositing into your reserve fund.

If you offer a bonus based on profitability will deferred maintenance increase because they want a bonus?

@Tony Thomas So, is the seller increasing their sale price in exchange for a 0% interest rate?