Age of the buildingCompetitive new supply - Quality Inn tends to be on the lower end of the market so you'll probably benefit from a rising tide, but older properties are severely impacted by new economy scale or midscale supply enters the marketNOI margin should be >30% - if it's not, your RevPAR is too low or operations are unnecessarily fatIt may be of benefit to align with a third-party operator that has some "skin-in-the-game," where you step into a joint venture limited partner role with major decision rightsThis is a very high-level list that doesn't account for location, seasonality, and other factors that may have a material impact on performance.

At the same time, however, these guys can have higher membership fees and use unnecessarily expensive software (compared to the smaller brokerages whom seem to be more cost effective and flexible, as @James Carlson points out). 

Having each property in its own LLC is a great way to unnecessarily kill cash flow.  

Limiting oneself to one niche can be restricting unnecessarily sometimes.

It gave hope and belief to me, for sure.And, I think it's really worth mentioning that this was essentially before home computers and the Internet were ubiquitous (well, I didn't have either at the time), so it's not like you could just watch the latest YouTube video to glean all of this information.In the end, people are unnecessarily harsh. 

Or on a smaller scale, it's how turnkey operators already function.I reckon it's the OP who's trying to reinvent the wheel unnecessarily.

I have too much to lose to be unnecessarily risky.

Did I unnecessarily inviting the realtor into a deal that did not require his efforts in the first place had i gotten in contact with the owners directly?

With that being said, I would recommend investing locally. 1) So you have your finger on the pulse w/ whats going on w/ your property, and you don't have to hire a PM at first unnecessarily. 2) If you see yourself staying in San Diego for the foreseeable future, it's an incredible long term play. 3) If you have the opportunity to leverage debt (less money down) for an owner occupied property I'd recommend taking advantage of that to start building your portfolio.

I suspect it will look weird because there won't be a flush connection due to the gap of the window depth...Raising the ceiling to the roof line would be awesome, but also unnecessarily expensive for a rental.Thoughts??