I’m only beginning to delve into real estate investing, and gain knowledge and insight.

One increasingly attractive strategy is converting these industrial spaces into self-storage facilities.

As this has been a material sight on the horizon-- notice I said sight not obstacle--for some time as well as some other QCs.

This is in a single family house I renovated in 2016 and turned into a rental. 

A few AI companies to look into are Besty, Hostbuddy (This is what I use), Yada, and Host AI.

Never handled a basement - what should i look into?

You can use the 1031 exchange to purchase larger investment properties or multiple smaller investment properties using all of the tax you would normally pay.

We automated our budget using Quicken Simplifi. 

Given that this property is 300 miles away- I’ve considered using a property manager or co host.

This means the income and losses aren’t automatically considered passive.If you or your spouse materially participate—either by spending 100+ hours and more than anyone else (including cleaners or managers), or by putting in 500+ hours total—you may be able to treat STR losses as non-passive and use them to offset W-2 income.