These are important questions because renovations can quickly eat away at your budget especially if you don't have a trustworthy contractor.

Real estate investing allows you to diversify your portfolio instead of having all of your eggs in one basket like with buying an investment property or stock market investments alone.Investing in real estate funds also gives you access to the real estate market without the hassle of being a property owner or manager.

What it seems like you are doing right now is stretching and rushing.You have a good nest egg for your annual salary, you don't want to burn that all and have to wait a few years to build it back up again.

What I have found through Google and forum searches is split between "everything is deductible" to "you just eat this cost."

It's harder to finance good properties right now for obvious reasons, and if you go NNN or DST then you need to be very clear about the costs (upfront and ongoing) that might eat at your returns. 

Str has elusion that it's money maker or break even, great to highlight the fact that break even most likely comes with no mortgage and even then hope you don't have any capital improvements that are needed. we work our strs the same way A great reason to not have all your eggs in the STR basket.

This cuts down on the back-and-forth driving, which can eat up a lot of time.

Kevin  My initial reaction would be to recommend against this as it appears you are putting all your eggs in one basket, meaning real estate. 

If you plan on keeping it as a rental - and you might want to talk to some experienced Clevelanders first - then you'll have to eat the $30k as well to make it work.

I don't put all my eggs in the STR basket.