Yes, it must be the rent prices, but also there seem to be a lot of 1 or 2 people travelers needing a small place for a short time.

Since we're In a college town, a majority of our travel demand revolves around the Texas A&M University and the university's events.

Second question is, if we don't live in the city we will invest in, we understand we will have to be traveling often, but who could be a good person to check in on the construction so we don't have to go every week?

For example, I wanted to buy a cheap, off-market hoarder house or fixer-upper under $X.

You will need to find someone who would rather go back to Costa Rica again and again, like having a second home there, rather than traveling to different parts of the world.  

@Brandon Carlson As @Chris Mason mentioned, if you can legally convert it to 3 unit property, and do it cheap, you can def refi and pull money out.

I do have folks that don't book because of that.That is a good thing as not understanding the distance to get places will create bad blood and cause those 2 and 3 star reviews which no one wants to see.Like @John Underwood, our place isn't cheap so we don't get the folks that destroy places.The bottom line is that you are renting out an expensive asset to strangers for 3-10 days or whatever.

I've celebrated by buying a home and traveling haha, congratulations to you to! 

Or buy a thermal camera to check for heat losses, they have gotten really cheap. 

And to make a BRRRR work in the current market, you either need a crew that can do cheap work or a way to source deals.