One of the reasons I love STR's is the chance to blend your lifestyle and investing goals.

I should have been chasing the the dream lifestyle.

Now I am determined to be successful, gain financial freedom and live a life style I could of only previously dreamed of. 

Some banks are more religious about their price drop schedules than others, but I can assure you none of them are taking offers at 80% of whatever they believe is market value at that point in time.Assuming you are in a seller's market, your chances of having a below market offer accepted on a listed property might be somewhere between 1 in 50 and 1 in 100.

I probably would have never purchased the properties without help from Lifestyles Unlimited mentors.  

In this case, I would probably use your property management company.Some level of hands on is good in this business, but it can be a lifestyle choice, which it is now for us.

Just from a risk/age standpoint, you can take more risk because you don't (presumably) have dependents, obligations, other costs of be a certain lifestyle (we all remember college mac and cheese days) and you have many many years of income to come; therefore, you can mess up a bit the way a 75 year old cannot just based on the number of income earning years ahead.

It is a lifestyle.

I personally dont think houston is a big equity play city, not now at least... theres several reasons why that i wont bore you with but if you are not buying for cashflow in Houston i think you are making a big mistake.the area you are talking about is going to be a young professional, hipster, millennial crowd... the risk is though this age demographic is starting to form families and im betting that history will repeat itself and they will find their way to the suburbs ...sure there will still be people that dont want that lifestyle, single professionals  etc, but i just dont believe this idea of EaDo will support the market pricing in the 5 yr time frame.things are starting to reshape in houston surburbs , almost every one of them are starting to have "hipster" "trendy" type of things to be more identifiable to the next generation of buyers.i think eastwood is nice and it has a lot of character but ask yourself would you raise kids in the area or be willing to be outside late at night... if your answer is no to both then you cant price it as a premium market

I use the bigger pockets calculators religiously, and I tent to estimate 5% across the board for CapEx, Vacancy, Repairs and then play with my numbers and go all the way up to 10% to see what sort of impact that would have as well.