Even though the lease does state that it's with the tenant and the owner.

To rent the home, I would lose about $2,500 per month (based on comparable rents in my area, property management fees, etc).Both options loose the same amount by roughly 2 years, and by this time, I still will not have built up much more equity in the home to make selling it a break even unless there is price appreciation by then.My dilemma is this: I speculate that my home will not appreciate much in the next 3-5 years due to the rapid pace of development in the surrounding area.In 5-10+ years, maybe, but by then I'll have bled $150,000 - $300,000.I have thought about this a lot and feel that I mar'-too close to the problem to see the best solution.

Your argument would suggest that if I bring home $2k/month in cash flow from a rental property in LA (where I live), that's a good deal, even though I probably had to put $2M cash into it initially.

Many judges would feel you got paid even if no cash was sent to you.I could see this potentially working on a higher-end property that it in excellent condition with a Grade A tenant.  

NEVER borrow from a 401K, you are taking pre-taxed dollars and paying it back with after tax dollars, you do not get to return the loan with pre taxed dollars, in addition, some 401K plans do charge interest and maybe even fees, and lastly if you get laid off for some reason, it is a distribution with all the "fun consequences: tax at the last dollar rate, and if you are under 59.5 there is also the additional 10% penalty.Personally I like the HELOC, however you can also sell stocks and do tax harvesting there to offset gains if that is an option

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.

Even if these relationships don't go anywhere, you'll get a lot from just having a couple of calls.Next I would try to find some local investment groups/communities and try to chat with as many investors as you can to get an idea how other's started out in your market.

What brand on Airbnb would even have enough perceived value to make it all worthwhile?

Hi, pre foreclosure in all of its permutations, before the bank sends Notice of Default (NOD) or efter which is state even county dependant but often starts a 4 week clock till the trustee auction are the 2nd most difficult deal scenario and IMHO only experienced investors should bother, the 1st most difficult deal scenario are bidding at the court house steps on lord only knows what is being auctioned off sometimes even 2nd mortgages, you need to do so much home work to attempt to reduce your risk at the court house steps...Pre foreclosure no one talks about these issues, always about the nice sounding stuff like "motivated seller" get a good deal etc etc both are usually not the case.- 95% of folks in pre or post NOD want to stay in their house, keep their house inspite of them 100% will loose the house at the auction. 

I have started investing for a few years and had some good results with a few GPs but even those GPs who had been coaching other people had really bad results this year (mainly no distribution).