Personally, I am not a big fan of STR's although they may be fantastic in certain areas of the county.

I started almost a year ago..its been a journey but no horror stories...yes drama but no horror...the person I was considering hiring to oversee the project decided to take the project on which was a dream come true...thx for your advice ..i did what you advised and then got lucky!

You might want to explore STR tax strategy if you are finding that the long-term rental tax strategy isn't working for your personal situation...

Simply, a percentage of the profits; so only AFTER the investors get their investment back + a “preferred” return of usually 6-8% annually.Here is how our equity (as opposed to our debt/loan/notes) syndications are set upwe as syndicators get a either a 3% broker fee or 3% acquisition fee at purchasewe get a management fee competitive with outside managementwe get 10% of gross rents as ASSET management feeonce investment is liquidated we receive 15% of proceeds ABOVE or AFTER investors receive their capital returned plus 10% annual calculated income including any distributions of earnings. 

Access to an STR isn't essential, but helpful and bonus when it's personal usage time..- Insurability & Operations costs: Can be considerably lower (especially in comparison to CA) with most coastal regions there is much lower wildfire risk and the properties that are in flood zones, have surprisingly accessible and affordable policy costs.

I personally develop quite a bit in a neighborhood where the zonign laws are already quite prohibitive and to make matters worse, the community as a whole fights all housing from being built in the spirit of stopping gentrification.  

There's some complicated ways around it and things may have improved, but I can tell you that I was personally threatened with being charged with a felony in 2019 for renting my property even though I had gone through the proper permitting.

With 6 properties under my belt I would prefer something I could get 80 - 85% Ltv.

We would like to start building our portfolio with a long term rental, preferably a duplex, using a property manager.

I use a broker, they do the leg work and since their interest is in my success, as opposed to an insurance sales person who's only interest is making commissions.