Tech is in almost everything and jobs are rapidly being automated this is a STEM area with Drone companies and BioScience for sure, We do have to reinvent ourselves every 4 years to stay current in tech but online Colleges like Nextgenu.com and 100s of other courses are all free online now.

If they're worried about the rental management process, tell them there are definitely some tools out there that can even help you to automate the rental management process.

While all this is automated, spend the entire year learning about RE.

Ticketing systems are a dime a dozen and tracking this info and sending monthly invoices can easily be automated.  

My approach has been to automate the early calculations using big data to save time, and allow me quickly focus on areas where the numbers make sense.

Automated appraisal.

As long as the information reported is accurate, the LCB platform has numerous automated protections and guidance in place to ensure our landlord, property manager and tenant members are protected and that reporting and usage of the different services remains in compliance with relevant legislation.

Learn from other's mistakes and if you're serious about operating STR's and you're not opting to have a co-host, know that it can and almost ALWAYS is a full time job, unless you have an excellent team in place and your automations and tech stack is on point.

Getting all my REI systems automated and once that happens, i wanna be the "homeless houseflipper" lolIf you want to live the minimalist lifestyle through real estate, you can definitely do so; comfortably and with other people paying for it!

(Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Akron are littered with negative population growth) With regards to your fear about the volume of rentals in the Columbus area, I would consider it as a percent of population verses a raw number.