Go in person if you can. 

Personally, the last thing I would want to do is purchase a STR in a community where every neighbor is my competition and floor plans are similar if not the same.

Personally not a fan of carpet, but you might be able to get away with it in the bedrooms. 

Especially for the amount of money they want.

I'd rather toss money in the S&P than a turn key property in a cheap market with low or no population growth. 

Leverage Lines of Credit: Some people tap into personal or business lines of credit to cover the EMD.

You wire funds to a company that is in the business of building buildings, they create plans, get permits, raise additional capital, supervise construction, supervise filling the building with tenants, sell the building to an institutional investor, and if everything has gone to plan then there will be a significant profit and they wire you back more money than you put in.

If you were to invest $100K+ of your own money into one property, where would you go?

Hi BP'rs, I don't have a good sense of how the interest rate cut today will affect me as a new investor looking for my first deal... will it start to drive up prices of homes in areas i'm looking at as money gets cheaper or am I off base?

I mean just look at where you personally live.. top ranked schools have the highest priced real estate 97.3 % of the time.