Then, sometime last year, someone stole an expensive wilderness camera and battery he had set up near the trail.

Those are all options to eventually use your primary as a rental without putting 20% down.When buying a pure rental property with conventional financing, you would have to put at least 20% down in most all conventional cases. 

A person's potential home isn't viewed as purely a commodity, it's an emotional reaction, e.g.: Will I like coming home to this place?

Light bulbs, batteries (all sizes), trash bags, cleaning towels, ice melt, etc.Hope this helps.

I wouldn't shy away from getting started with STR, but would pick a property thats not in a pure-play vacation/tertiary market so that the property could be easily converted into a long-term rental if the STR doesn't work out

I own pure commercial, mixed-use, SFRs, small multis 2-10 units. 

Recently Ford announced a $5.6 Billion Investment in the Memphis Regional Megasite for one of the largest battery and vehicle manufacturing campuses in the U.S.

:)You would have to flip 80 homes a year for five years and make $50,000 pure profit on each one.

I also currently live in Atlanta and fly free.My focus is purely multifamily properties which severely limits my options in my current city. 

You know the general direction that is going, but catching it at exactly the right time is pure luck.