I have already signed up to attend a few local RE groups in an effort to learn & network.

Also, once you register for one RE group on meetup site, they'll bombard you with suggestions for many more groups in RE world.Best of luck!

I even had a GAP funder ready to jump in if we needed "Chip Brown " A great guy.I even lined up my "C" buyer but the broker i had working the deal who assured me he could get the deal funded told me he was going on vacation and would pass the deal to another broker who could "possibly" get it done by mid January.The seller would not go for the length of the extension and I did not like the whole last minute pass off to a new guy so i pulled the plug On it and will regroup and save up and attack it again early Feb 2017.A learning experience to say the leastLesson I took away.

you say that you "were told to" get an STR for tax purposes, which seems odd, and that you only have 30-40K... and you might use HELOC money to help with the down payment, which will just put tremendous pressure on you to be profitable and support all of the debt.unless i am missing something i would back up and regroup before you buy a random STR in a random market and hope it supports all the debt you will have to have...

We also offer "no-leasing-fee" management agreements in an effort to better align our incentives with that of the owners.Thanks for the great post.My BP blog is: http://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/5742-building-w...Also, please free to checkout my other RE groups.

Take the L, save the stress, regroup and reset. 

There's a lot of great information here on BP, and I'd encourage you to get involved in local RE groups.  

BP is a great place to find like-minded individuals, and like local RE groups, share knowledge and find professionals who understand the unique needs of REI.

I re group in Dec for the next year's goals. 6 months is far enough to do some damage but not too far out to forget and not be effective.

Failures happen in life, just regroup and try again.