You would only be paying $500/mo to live in a nice place and your tenants would still be helping to pay down your mortgage, and hopefully you buy in an appreciating market.Grant Cardone's philosophy is to rent where you live and buy where you rent.

That was really encouraging.

My financial advisor has highly encouraged me to not do any REI right now, and to pay off the loans, apply for PSLF, etc.

We've already vetted eachother out and seem to have similar investing philosophies when looking for properties. 

After you check reviews (usually not many of them, so rarely helpful) and get referrals (the best thing), I'd encourage you to put more of your focus in learning how to do thorough due diligence on the properties, not the providers.

For example:Monthly rent = $600Monthly utility fee of $97 collected with rent each month.This keeps your monthly rent at a lower rate while still disclosing to the tenant that the utility fee amount will be collected.In general in the future as you look to grow your investments that aren't house-hacks I'd encourage you to not pay utilities on behalf of the tenants unless the market demands it. 

Keep in mind the old saying that the only people that win in court are the lawyers.My philosophy is to try to stay out of tenant lifestyle issues.

We've always encouraged investors to approach the vacation rental business in a well capitalized manner, and this incident will only strengthen that position.

Most of the jurisdictions encourage such ADU unit development these days.

@Quinn Konitshek Thank you for the encouragement, will keep at it and see what happens!