@Josh Quinn  Twin Palms is a great neighborhood full of awesome midcentury's and walking distance to amenities: hotels, restaurants etc.

You are competing with hotels in Palm Springs and Indio that offer pools, bars, and outdoor activities like croquette so you need to give people a reason to book your place and you're going to be hard-pressed in the lower price ranges.

A few hundred dollars plus hotel isn't a terrible way to spend a weekend seeking your next investment.

Arisa,You state that "we would plan to do most of the work ourselves".I would urge you to think about the DIY hours that could be involved here, because 12 hotel rooms is a lot of labor for you and your husband to take on.If the construction cost will be $250,000, I would estimate that there will be approximately 4,000 workhours that will be expended during the renovation. 

Don't buy hotel though LOL.

Mainly focusing on the need for more Hotel Rooms, and High Rises to continue to drive Raleigh as an event hub.

Multifamily STR is called a hotel.

On the plus side, renting for six months and a day means you will not be subject to state/county/city hotel taxes, which is smart. 

I can't speak for your locale, but in Texas, one of the main issues is making sure you are paying hotel taxes (state level + county level + city (if within a city limit)).

Don't get me wrong there are markets that are actually saturated out there (Joshua Tree, CA seems to be on the come-up on this) but now most listings I see that are non-performing are just being ran by someone who has absolutely no idea what they are doing or they are not treating their property like a hotel.