We pay a shade over $5000 for a 2 ton

Add cash flow and equity pay down for total return.  

The nice thing for you with a 1031 from that STR to an area like this is that you'll lose a lot of monthly expenses that LTRs usually pay. 

I am likely going to be paying approx 300K stupid tax on their account.

I don’t like being micro-managed but understand that some owners need that extra reassurance and I’m happy to give that to them. 

I've recently been having a lot of extra free time and decided to invest all of it into learning more about real estate and investments in real estate.

The seller will be responsible for paying the agent commission.

They know we will have more business for them, and we always pay when the bill arrives by hand.Brochure process- you can google Self Storage and pull up a brochure for a location for sale. 

The 600k is rolled into the Y2 build (same as above), this is repeated for 5 years at which point the Y1 build is refi (will have approx. 120k in equity build just from mortgage pay down, no apppreciation factored in.

It has not been smooth at all as most tenants do not want to pay.