For what it´s worth, I would always rather rent like normal but earmark that revenue for a trip of my own where I can pick whatever place I like. 

Once you have those in place, get your pre-approval, plan a trip to where you want to buy, meet with your team, and jump in!

I take 5-6 trips to Wichita visiting family & friends.

With 1 or 2 properties, stuff like this isn’t really an issue. 2 hours trip to the property round trip included to make this repair is no big deal.

and it will require multiple trips and could take months or longer to eliminate this issue.

I am still planning to make a trip to Indy to look at properties and hopefully get something under contract by year's end.

You may want to ask your property manager to put a Rently Box on each house so that prospective tenants can look at the homes on their own without your property manager having to make a trip for each showing.  

Just last week I was at one of my STRs which has a a nice Weber propane grill and when I went down under the deck someone left a brand new charcoal grill that they apparently bought on their trip to use instead of my Weber propane grill and left it behind.  

Slips, trips, and falls are one of the top causes of injuries.

I am closing on a property in a few weeks and would like to take a trip to Colombia in South America that will overlap with closing.