Even if you want to invest a year from now, cleaning up your money is the most important thing to do.

Could I have an avg. rent of 4.33 days, outwork everyone (cleaner) by a substantial number of hours and not offer substantial services other than certain guest special request and meet the exception.Does the IRS consider all the marketing, accounting, bill paying, guest communications (daily inquiries), market research, pricing, real estate purchase, taxes, supply ordering, maintenance/ cleaning set ups, and a thousand other things we do yearly to keep the STR going as hours toward material participation?

After this tenant leaves, you must clean/repair, market, screen applicants, select an applicant, collect the deposit and rent, get them moved in, etc.

It also makes cleaning easier, as you don't get that layer of nastiness where the sink meets the counter.But, if this is a low end, low rent type area, probably best to do it as cheap as possible.  

The tenants are reasonably clean, so no issue with trash or critters. 

In accordance with the lease agreement, the property shall be fully vacated, cleaned, and returned in the same show quality condition upon move-in.

I also recommend including some move-out instructions for cleaning, how to turn in keys, when they will get the deposit back, etc. 

Vrbo and Airbnb makes it pretty easy to self-manage.Add a great cleaning team and you are 95% of the way there.Its good to locate handymen and the like but those are easy to find on local FB groups or thumbtack.

Even if the area is cleaned up, I wouldn't purchase any rental real estate in Kensington, Fishtown or Northern Liberties for a few years.

I would use cleaning services but it's my understanding I could use more than one company over the course of the year to limit how many hours one company spends on it.I'm looking into a utilitarian STR more for business travelers, so this won't be one where everything is perfect, it's bound to accumulate wear and tear I think.The STR would be out of state, but I plan to travel there for probably two weeks a year where I would perform many repairs myself.