I am also wondering if anyone can recommend any good research tools for investing in out of state properties, which I personally have had a tough time finding myself (side note: I'm a software engineer by trade so if something good does not exist, ill be happy to build something out for the community) 

It's very tough to be an expert when you're so far away because real estate is a very localized business. 

I offered up my office etc to a few folks who chased these down. its a ton of work we got a few.. but it is VERY tough as in VERY.

Which was tough since we moved our family into the four which had less room. 

I am a 1099 employee, which is making the pre approval process quite difficult.I have great credit, no debt, and sufficient funds, but since I don’t have 2 years of 1099 income that doesn’t seem to matter.

@Zachary Olley MFR in most areas by me are tough to find comps on, not enough sell.  

Fair warning for Denver metro area... 1% is tough to find.  

I know you said the weekdays are tough for you, but if you ever get the chance, we host a meetup in Northridge, every 3rd Thursday of the month.

Some examples of potential future drivers will be: something similar to what Bush did when he signed the American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003, China easing up on Capital Controls (this would be a great sign, but with trade war and China's issues with their own economy I seriously doubt this), IPOs over last 2 years creating much needed wealth for employees (takes 12-24 months for them to be able to exercise stock options), a dot com like bubble in the stock market (I think this is most likely scenario given stock buybacks and QE and I won't be surprised to see stocks doing something absolutely unbelievable over the next 1-5 years similar to 97-end of dot com bubble), or heavy doses of QE and easier access to credit for most people.Working in the Bay Area, we saw first hand how many buyers were foreign and how many paid for houses in cash without even looking at the homes in quite a few cases. 

I tend to buy in the Southern half of the US for 2 reasons:1) you get much higher year-round occupancy rates in the South & it’s simply tough to earn a good ROI in the North if your place sits vacant for a big chunk of the year2) Culturally, the Southern half of the US seems to be a lot more accepting of STRs regulation-wise.