Understanding the basics of real estate investment, market analysis, and property management is crucial. 

The negative 1K per month includes the property management fee.

In fact, my internal team manages our website and SEO fully as it is a very crucial piece to visibility.

This is perfect being 2 doors down from where we live so we do not have to pay cleaners and property management.

That does seem to help but most self-managers just use the 2 OTA without a PMS. 

You will hire 2-3 of the wrong contractors also and lose 10-15k in walkway money.Your first try should be to do a flip as a smaller partner with someone else, a friend, a local investor from a meetup, so you can learn the ropes, know how to manage a crew, etc.

We've been managing our properties for 2 years now and been doing a lot of the work ourselves to save money, such as yard maintenance, cleaning, unit flips, etc.

What is the value add to the builder for his time, management, experience, subs, etc.?  

This can be formalized with a legal document specifying that your wife and you will handle all mortgage payments and management responsibilities.Hope this helps!

I find that I spend at least 1-2 hours per day 4-6 times per week managing this place.