Hi,We have contracted for a new construction home with a builder.

Will they likely be recycled into a new STR under new ownership?

Take a look at BP's blog where new articles are published every day: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog4.

What are your biggest challenges as a new real estate investor?

It seems like we could get a down payment for a new, cheaper property and some passive income while also saving the buyer money. 

Hire a Architect to provide drawings with a lot of details such as existing house elevations and floor plan, proposed elevations and new floor plan, roof, wood deck, addition, etc.

STR I would highly recommend not to focus on as first investment: also there, my partner is a superhost and we have been managing Airbnb for years and the last year has been pretty funky: people tend to book last minute and you risk to be cash flow negative starting brand new.

Chances are you don't want to buy a building that had PERC spills and EPA just chomping at the bit to hit the new owner with environmental cleanup costs, that might be way more than the building is worth. 

Also, most of them have already had the special assessments  And yet not a month has gone by without a story in the news of that happening again because of the new Fannie Mae condo underwriting guidelines and the new Florida state law on condo reserves.

I buy the property with a DSCR loan at 7% for 30years for an annual payment of $300K. 20% down is $1M from investors.Increase rent (value add) over then next year to $1150/m creating a new NOI of $524K.