@Kevin S.can you go to their office and talk it over?

It'll just start being front offices in the big blue cities of red states, living near by.

In my case, they said I have an unpermitted apartment in the basement which I used for an office, and demanded it be torn down, then file plans from scratch and build my office.

I sent an email to a commercial loan officer to see what we would need to get a loan for around $450,000 and he said we would need to have 25-30% down since it is not a "regular" commercial property.

A DST is a hands-off, institutional grade real estate investment (apartments, self storage, commercial, medical office, etc), that allows the investor the option to diversify into multiple markets and industries around the country.

If I'm in your shoes, I would use this as an opportunity to network with other brokers in the office as well as attend local meetups to get a feel for who the movers and shakers are. 

One of them can either be a second living room or could be a home office, another could be a dining room or could be an office, or used for something else.

I'd like to start small with 1-2 STR tiny house(s) or other less expensive "alternate housing" options (yurt, airstream, etc).

This can have a very beneficial impact as personal property typically has a much shorter useful life for depreciation purposes than real property.For example, if you are getting a cost segregation study performed on a commercial office building, there will most likely be assets that have been classified as part of the building but are able to be reclassified to real property and depreciation over a shorter useful life such as 5,7 or 15 years rather than 39 years.

I cannot afford  and will never want to learn to use The Mortgage Office software.Thanks.BTW, that is ridiculous in this day & age a servicer having a poor portal.