Some will be sight unseen, some will be third party mediated and those "auctions" always have ghost bidders to get to the reserve so you will see a property come back again and again.What was your goal in going on here?

Listen to the BP podcasts on STRs Short Term Shop podcasts and go back to the beginning.

With luck, insurance should cover your damage restoration costs to get you back to the original pre-repaired state if you've been vacant less than 60 days (they are not going to pay for your renovations if they havent yet been completed).

Hey Andrew, welcome back!

I will come back to this and post more but finding a good realtor in Investment world is worth its weight in GOLD! 

If I could do it all over again, I would invent a time machine, go back to the age of 21 and start buying buildings then.

Quote from @Alex Hunt: Hey David, back in January we closed a rural STR purchase in the NC mountains.

I definitely told them I would get back to them on it.

Where I'm worried I might kick myself if I back out is the area is appreciating fairly quickly with a lot of development nearby with many being priced out a neighborhood over and coming this way.

For context, I spent a decent amount of time building AI tools in real estate and shared this article AI in real estate what is hype what is real in BP a a bit ago.If you are paying $250, and it is not making that money back, then it is wasted money.