You are WAY too eager to leave your job for investing when investing takes years to deliver a return comparable to your job unless you have a bank vault of money to play with.

But I'll play along...   

I'm trying to wrap my head around working with investment capital long term, and there's also the potential for some seller financing from the building owners, and my cousin is on the board of a bank which could also come into play.

In your situation, it sounds like the primary focus for you is more a quality of life play (reducing your commute time), and the STR may allow you to break even cash flow wise? 

In your situation the OA is going to play a more substantial role because you have a partner.

You get blocked by carriers then expect your personal phones to be shut down.You don't have to using a service like Launch Control or the others...Only with the google play app do you have to use a personal phone number and I haven't used that number in 1 1/2 year.The anti spam things the networks are doing are pretty difficult to get around I can see why that SMS platform threw in the towel and has you using your real phone number.  

I'd be interested to hear how you approach evaluating a borrower’s past performance and how that plays into your final lending decision.

I've tried many different strategies, and all have turned out average...economy of scale and systems & processes play a key role in long-term success.

There's a price/rent lag because leases are typically for a year so there's the delayed effect of old leases playing out before upward pressure on rents does it's thing.With that said, there's also your ability to refinance out of that rate and improve the rentability of it that way.

Hey Matthew - Rates can vary depending on the specific scenario—things like property value, LTV, cash flow, credit score, and whether or not you want to buy down the rate with points all play a role.