IANAL, but just had a call with them and signed up for a holding company registration, and an LLC for a LTR in South FL that I have been running under my STR property LLC, registered in another state (which I don't think was giving me the intended protections for the FL property).

If you call that 10% of gross rents you will spend $116,000 a year on property management if you were earning $1,000/month/rental (about 1/3 of your gross profit on 97 rentals.)  

But if you have to jump through hoops or spend a significant amount of money to put it in might not be worth it. 

Unfortunately, this costs $$$ that you shouldn't have to spend.

I'm going to reiterate what's already been mentioned above, but I'm going to actually give you examples of why it's relevant to you to find a U.S. tax professional.1 - You're going to need to file U.S. taxes once you have property down here, there's federal filings, state filings, and sometimes local filings too2 - Tons of tax treaties between the U.S. and Canada that are easy to miss and can cost you a lot of money (important one with rentals - effectively connected income - if the professional you talk to doesn't know what this is, run away)3 - The amount of days you spend in the U.S. needs to be tracked and if you go over a threshold, all of your worldwide income could be taxable by the U.S.4 - Selling real property means up to 15% of your sales proceeds might not be available to you for years (FIRPTA)5 - Lots of nuance at the state and local levels, which both want to take as much money from you as possibleMain takeaway here is that you should find a U.S. based tax person.

Explore multifamily or out-of-state investments for higher yields.Setting up an LLC provides liability protection but has no tax benefit for you now.This post does not create a CPA-Client relationship.

I don't want to spend all my capital, but I think I could potentially refinance and get some back.

Don't spend time looking for something that doesn't exist.

I'm going off the understanding that you still need to spend 500+ hours in the business to achieve material participation (please correct me if I'm wrong). 

i think you can be successful if you are willing to do what you alluded to, which is spend time in person in your chosen market.