I'm analyzing a mountain/lake town about 4-6 hours out from 3-4 fast growing cities.

HML is the same as getting a mortgage from a regular lender such as a bank or credit union, but the HML does not require as much documentation and they provide money really fast say, within a few days. 

My fingers are crossed for a fast lease up !!

I bought this property with a private interest free loan from a friend. the person i bought it from need cash fast so i offered them a low cash offer and they accepted.I had enough money saved up to rehab the house with my savings.

While you work on that, you could also explore creative financing options like DSCR loans or partnerships to fast-track your first STR.

I understand that starting out, depending on how fast you want to build your portfolio, you could spend a lot of time at it.For those with established investment portfolios, how much time is required to maintain it?

Generally larger commercial properties and shopping centers are easier to classify with hard and fast rules, but to the points above the residential areas really move very quickly and have way more nuance than most people care to admit.zip codes are generally way too large for my liking at least in my market to provide any kind of insights other than macro level economics but even then highways or rivers that cut through a zip code can end up with totally different trade areas.we can get pretty granular with cellphone data and with grocery center data to understand the trade areas and their true boundaries, but that kind of data pull is generally only cost effective for investors doing larger scale projects or developments, and honestly we still just end up getting on the ground and feeling it out, so I generally tell people that the money is better spent on a plane ticket and weekend trip in the area you are looking rather than any kind of "trade area" level data studies.and generally B class in 1 area means something different than another. 

I saw how fast the city was growing and decided to make the jump.

It’s growing fast, has good schools, and offers affordable homes compared to Houston.

There are definitely some hiccups with it being a small company, but I do have to say that their response time on tickets is really fast.