Yup, and that's just basic 101.

My view is that the extra income from STRs/MTRs basically compensates for the extra effort.  

The entire town is in a property owner association(basically and HOA).

Basically, you are trying to jump the gun.

While all of this may seem obvious, I have personally encountered all of it in flips in my market, so clearly not every flipper thinks about something as basic as "can my refrigerator door open all the way?".

He comes across like a very basic con artist slime-ball to me, preying on insecure people by acting confident and successful, which people mistake for actual success.

The basic fees on a loan make up too high a percentage on low priced loans which classifies them as predatory.

I e-mailed the city council people and the response I got was basically "We're not allowing more than 250 STR's in our city so get in line".

It makes sense they do that for safety reasons but how frustrating for you! 

Expense ratios vary dramatically depending on project size, age and other factors, but basic rule of thumb is the smaller the project the higher the expense ratio's, using a 33% expense ratio for a small facility (less than 150 units) is optimistic, smaller facilities are probably closer to 40%.