My family was an investor in a Corporate Housing designated complex and it turned out to be very profitable.

Turning your primary residence into an investment property down the road is a great strategy.

Those people overlooking what it means to “materially participate”Here’s the Material Participation Criteria:Spend more than 500 hours on the short-term rental businessDo substantially everything for the STR businessSpend more than 100 hours on the activity and no one other individual spends more time than you doSignificant participation activity for more than 100 hours, and your combined activity in all significant participation activities exceeds 500 hoursParticipating in the business for five of the 10 previous taxable yearsPersonal service activity (non income-producing) for three of the previous taxable yearsRegular, continuous, provable participation in the business for more than 100 hoursA Cautionary Tale: The Story of JacksonLet's take a moment to learn from the mistakes of others.

The question here though, why are banks turning you down for a very normal loan product?

Purchase preforming notes capped at half your total deployable capital (150K)Then sale the future revenue of those notes through note exchanges, doing this will allow you to hedge the US real estate volatility while turning a profit from the market  

The second of two homes I bought when I sold the rental, I would have bought a more expensive one as the one I got was close to the university and tended to attract students which had higher turn over (though it may also be my local market).I'd also look up how to do a 1031 (I think that is what it's called, I'm not in the US) where you defer capital gains taxes on rentals by buying another within a set period of time.

I have a unique property, it's a 4 bedroom home with a lower level having a few small commercial offices and then there's a 22x35 oversized garage.  I'm having trouble finding a tenant that I feel comfortable leasing ...

Lmk how everything turns out!

Ive done A/B testing to see if going through my mortgage broker, or going directly to the bank would produce a better result.

Turned out that the house had been owned by a family who lived there forever and ran a small beauty salon out of the house, so one of the bedrooms had been turned into the hair salon and the dining area turned into a foyer.