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.

@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). 

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.

I don’t mind regulations and have them at our property in Lake Placid, NY it’s just a matter of knowing what they are and how much it cuts into the revenue.

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..

An ADU addition in a SFH zoned area in my market adds significantly less value than the hands of cost of adding the ADU.  

I pulled this off but with an FHA 203k loan which allows you to wrap the cost of renovations into the loan.