It's odd they have washer dryer hook ups but no central air.I think your price is reasonable, especially with the cap ex you're going to have to do.I don't know about owner/occupied status.

I can however purchase the house cash for $30,000 without having any title work but of course take the risk on of someone potentially claiming their stake (the odds of this seem very low).

I've been frantically trying to get this deal in front of as many potential buyers as possible, not only for higher odds of assignment, but because the deadline for the EMD is approaching which could render the contract null and void.

If you get a high-paying tenant in there, you can increase your odds of increasing the home's value.

Seemed odd but I’m not an appliance expert. 

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...

If that works for you, it works for me fine, but seems odd.

We obviously handle the ones near us in-house, but hiring someone in another market to work one day a month is a bit of an odd task.My guess is that remote property management companies need to have a sort of Swiss-army-knife person in the area that can do many variable tasks for them and works on an hourly basis as there may not always be things to do, but I don't know that for a fact.How do remote/long-distance property management companies overcome the challenges of not being in the area?

Invasion of privacy, unclean and rude house members, maybe if they do drugs or smoke or are party animals, unwanted friends of theirs visiting at odd hours, clashes of personality

It's the odd ones out that probably got a great deal on a property and immediately jumped into just getting good-great cash flow.I would say look at your dollars ($), do the math, make sure your sites are set on not going over your funds ($), make sure the location you are looking at has your criteria and find a property that fits.