RE meetups that have helped me are very specific to San Francisco Bay Area market (sales and median rents in the last year and last quarter) so I'd recommend finding a meet up or session that might address your local market and if that's a viable option for you to invest in. 

But a 2,000 SF, 3bd/2.5ba Colonial in suburban Generic Big City?

I have heard a lot of that 1x per quarter is max.  

The top chart below quickly shows you what the renovated, avg and distressed homes sell for in that area on a $/sf basis over time, so if you are estimating way over the top line, you instantly know something is off, maybe you have an outlier comp on your hands, etc.It doesn't have STR data, because any STR we build must also pencil as a LTR to avoid being upside down if it doesn't workout, so we use normal residential lease data when underwriting our rentals.As for forecasts on the market, I don't do any aside from the current Q trending % at the footer of the charts, and it's really just the current Q's average data/performance held constant and applied to the rest of the quarter (since not fully done with Q yet).

Quicken loans sells their NPN's in pools on a quarterly level that we just made a bid on.Often times, we will also get large institutional traders who have bought large pools from the big 5, who have one off's or smaller traunches of assets that we can pick up as well from this same marketing.  

There are three items required to make a successful partnership - Time, Experience, Capital.If you are a syndicator, you are likely expected to have time and experience.There is a lot that goes into being a competent syndicator - Proper communications, finding a good deal, communicating quarterly updates, networking with lenders, contractors, PM companies.You can gain experience by doing your own deals or working for someone who does(Ideally both).I personally think you should cement your experience before worrying about OPM.Best of luck

I'm worried about water leaks I don't see that cost me $300 this quarter.

Inflation whether due to material costs, material shortages, labor shortages, labor wage hikes, or just increase growth demands, etc won't be curtailed starting 4th quarter of next year.

We're also able to evaluate our rates, and keep pace with inflation, on a monthly and quarterly basis because of shorter term leases.Now we syndicate larger self-storage deals and work with passive investors.

Until the next quarterly update.