Otherwise you spend year 1 paying yourself back for the furniture (if you're lucky) and then hope to make a profit in year 2, only for your lease to possibly change terms, losing all of the time you put into building your brand.

Basically you need to be able to pay a large part of a long-term (multi-year) lease up-front, then still have some cash for renovation and interior/furniture, to finally recoup the investment through STR and a hopefully very quick way.

This is the perfect example.We have been using the leses and other froms from WLB for over a decade and I have seen them getting updated over the years, so I somtimes throw out a package of forms and order new ones to be up to date, but they are so inexpensive, its a no brainer.WLB has a store downtown Milwaukee worth visiting: they have all sorts of landlord supplies you did not even know you needed from print all the way to parking signs and traffic cones.

I have way too many tools/supplies for an apartment and a very high drive German Shepherd.

And the demand is only going to increase incredibly over the next two decades due to demographics and lack of supply and building. 

(downpayment, closing costs, HOA fees, renovation, furniture...etc?)

I've heard of mentees who started cleaning up construction areas on a flip at the end of each work day or picking up supplies at Home Depot and delivering them to the job site.

The market, like many, saw a huge supply bump from 2020-2022, on the order of magnitude of about 100%, which outpaced demand and drove ADRs and RevPAR down. 

Pete area in the next 4-9 months but have been watching supply and days on market steadily increase and asking prices drop on a weekly basis.

I have no clue what the warranty window is Bill Brandt, but I also read from the next guy replying that they would never supply ice makers in a rental.