I am married to a successful interior designer who serves luxury clients but can work with me to make rental properties look great for half the cost with her knowledge of what makes the most impact.

(not counting the state LLC cost) I am not going to respond to your SDIRA/LLC consulting service unless you are a lawyer or can quote me a cost. 

@Kevin DuongShort-Stay Rentals (STR) can bring in a lot of cash but also come with high costs for when guests come and go and tough rules.

We track most things manually, but use Apartments.com for the units currently occupied (adding more units in our portfolio will incur the Apartments.com premium cost, so I want to explore my options if software is no longer free). 

I marketed this property as a business - as it brought in 155K in gross revenues , could go to 180K with some extra work.I see many people who got into the airbnb game 3 years ago trying to unload now, almost at cost.

It's pretty hard to invest with $8k since most lenders have a $100k minimum loan amount, meaning you will need about $35k to buy a property after the 20% down and the associated closing costs. 

Firstly, it has a relatively low cost of living and affordable real estate prices, allowing investors to purchase properties at a lower initial cost compared to many other cities.

People told me I could hire someone to help setup QB for my rentals but this would have cost a couple grand.

While researching and evaluating homes, I had an idea for managing the down payment and emergencies for the first property.When I find a property with good cash flow, I could use a private money lender (PML) to cover the down payment and closing costs.

Buying for 625K, cost for fix up with 1 ADU about 400K..