Your moving from Hawaii to Springfield? 

I should point out that the owner of the property is a company from California and I live in Springfield Illinois.

"Things to avoid" will definitely help, but I want to ask about downtown and Springfield in general.

I have worked on a couple flips in Springfield with my father Who's a broker and have been house-hacking a duplex in Palmer for three years.

Branson/Springfield easily meet this criteria without being crazy expensive.I have read lots of posts about Branson and it seems like there may be some restrictions around STR.

Unfortunately for you Redfin is not in Springfield, in which case you either have to fallback to using a realtor or use the Greene county assessor comp search to find the comps then do your own adjustments:https://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?...

Nothing on yelp (they are based in Springfield, MO).

Agreed,  My family has owned several of the 30k houses in the Springfield area for several years. 

West you have Framingham, Southboro, Fitchburg, Worcester and Springfield (which I would personally avoid).

Again, when a list of providers is suggested, there is no apparent requirement to use a specific provider.This specific issue came up while I was a broker in Springfield.