Well it's simply not a viable or realistic business now is it. 

I doubt it goes away entirely, but I expect there will be substantial cuts over the next few years. 

For example, if I qualify for a $150K HELOC, should I go ahead and open the full $150K line and simply draw what I need (e.g., $60K)?

I got the idea that the people I was talking with simply work for a larger outfit and got paid the same so they didn’t care much for additional properties for the company they may or may not work for a long-term. 

This time around, we cut the tenant location process from 3 weeks to 8 days, cash in hand.Thanks again, BP family, for helping me. 

Tell him you need to get moving and if can't do it, then you need to find someone else and it will cut into his share of the profit as it is for work he's meant to do. 

He simply treated your STRs as LTRs. 

Identify and root out issues: get rid of bad tenants, improve the units & common elements, improve service and ultimatley tenant satisfaction - make it a desirable place to live, cut down turnover to under 10% (turnover costs you probably way more than better PM).

You could cut rates to zero and people still could not afford these prices.

What I didn't anticipate was having two tenants leave within the first year.As for why they left — both simply couldn't afford the rent.