Depending on how much you are putting down, generally living there for just one year won't be enough.

I need the asset to perform 365 days of the year, so I am exploring medium term- 1 month medium stays.

I really do wish you the best of luck and very much hope this works out. 

Hopefully you won't need their services for a long time!

Currently they need to be purchased with 100% cash, or, 50% down with high interest lending.  

You could then get a HELOC/LOC on that paid of property (a product that doesn't require you to use it) and then if you did have a big emergency you had a line to use on it.Now, ALL of this is dependent on how much money you have in the bank, how many properties you have, what your income will be like in retirement, what the standard age would be for your end of life (that's a scary one to think about), and while yes, you can certainly take equity out I just think it would be good to sit down with a financial planner...or even some other investors that are local to you that are around your age demographic and see what they are doing.I'm glad you are thinking about this for sure.  

@Terrance Coleman - Nice, well if you're looking to do fix and flips in your market, I highly recommend you find someone doing fix and flips in your market and work to provide them as much value as possible / expect nothing in return. 

Just imagine if you had a property manager charging that much on a 400k house - that would be nearly $350 per month!

Some of them being: that they purchased the property very long time ago and don't need a massive amount of income to cash flow, they are fearful of raising rents and having a vacancy, or they just don't wanna deal with it anymore.Either way, this is where the opportunity lies for the new Investor.

I put my sister who lived in section 8 housing as a 40% owner on the deed and she moved in paying the mortgage which was much less than the rent she was paying in rent.