Ideally, I want more booking through Furnished Finder (to cut down on AirBnb fees), as well as direct from insurance providers, relocation specialists, etc.

I do that as well. try real estate land development entitlement or getting involved in ground up new construction on infill lots as a partner. the returns are higher than all of these. all cash IRRs are 40%+ to the partners we work with in columbus and levered returns are greater than 100% cash on cash return. that's with us making our cut as well. 

They just cut it off and didn’t have it cut on in their name anywhere. 

I saw a local investor post a few of his places up for sale - they were bought at a high price, fixed up extremely nice - so I'm guessing the LTR numbers wouldn't cut it. 

Most Costa Rican mortgage loans require %50 down which we have the cash for but we don't want to tie up that much of our liquid assets in one property as we intend to buy a 2nd property in the next year or so.

So you too need to develop some reserve accounts - one for repairs, and also one for property taxes and property insurance payments - which are big expenses that are due once a year, but your seller will likely not collect like a bank might escrow for you.Know that seller financing gives you lots of options to negotiate your deal - but that cuts both ways.  

I don't know any private lenders and hard money makes me nervous since I'm a buy and hold guy and the payback isn't as cut and dry as it is on a fix and flip.

What is the prospect that insurance or tax costs will be cut 30%?     

I was speaking of STVRs not STRs.Smart hospitality managers don t tie up capital by owning a property.

I love Bigger Pockets because 99.9% of the posts on here are legitimate, and the very few that aren't, quickly get cut off by the eagle-eyed forum moderators.