Personally, I airbnb half of my house, individual rooms, and stay nearly 100% booked.

All situations are specific to individuals.Our best wishes and empathy go out to those LA individuals and communities.It’s been about 6 years since one of our storage locations was flooded for about 4 months.  2 feet over the roof.  

The only "spam" calls I get are from individuals trying to buy my property (likely wholesalers).

There's some excellent relevant & recent material from very high quality individuals on this forum.

For this reason, I teach people to set policies for renting to unrelated individuals.

The Exclusive Right to Represent makes sense for prospective individual homebuyers, but for real estate investors, it seems unfair and limiting.

And if you go under contract as an individual, can you then JV with another investor or is it too late?

As a result, this isn’t the kind of market that attracts top-tier PM talent.Your best solution might be to either:1.Take on self-management if possible (and if you’re willing to put in the time/effort).2.Find an individual you can trust to handle these properties, set up very specific instructions and processes, micro-manage them initially to ensure standards are met, and compensate them well to make it worth their while.This approach requires more oversight on your part but can yield better results in markets like this.

I reached out to the individual marketing the deal to schedule a property viewing, but they’re asking for proof of funds (which I expected) and a signed purchase agreement or LOI.Is this normal?

Also SOP for such is individual property owners will, individually, address total site cleanup in concert with there insurance providers.