Change the water filters regularly.

Do you think it can be a huge risk vs just having a regular rental investment property? 

Also, my goal is really to "retire" from my regular job around 5-7 years from now, are short term rentals a good area of focus or should I be looking elsewhere? 

Since you have a job hopefully you have regular direct deposits going into a bank.

I hear fairly regularly that groups/people running bigger deals run into issues, because they seemingly lose focus on the operations.  

It's a little 1/1 420sqft, but this thing is occupied 90%+ of the time and regularly generates 3k+ per/mo cash flow.

@Jason Torres If you're going to be buying and selling mobile homes on a regular basis, you may just want to get licensed yourself.

I still get all the same contingencies I would get for a regular SFH purchase.

It was long enough a time period to get the business established and see if the model paid enough to cover a regular mortgage (it does).

I can tell anyone working with companies to be safe to NOT give them upfront money period end of comment.There are other lenders who do not require upfront money.They will make the amount sound small or not that significant.These companies are professional scammers and the lowest of the low.Real lenders will understand in this climate that clients are skiddish of the being the next horror story around the corner.Once residential became highly regulated many of these scammers moved operations to the commercial side.Unfortunately I find more frauds than legit lenders.The problem comes in with alternative financing.Many banks want 70% LTV and have strict underwriting.The borrower does not want hard money and a bunch of points as the alternative.Instead they want to pay a few points higher and then have a 85% LTV to leverage their money to pursue more deals.This in between area of regular bank money and hard money is where the most fraud is occuring.The clients are desperate to land a decent loan without giving up a bunch of equity or having to partner with someone else.I believe more commercial regulation is coming in the next few years.Whoever you are working with if they are confident with their abilities and who they are working with they can get paid at closing.No closing-no money.