>have a single family rental in Merced, CA that I believe has a slow appreciation: bought for $170k in 2005 & its now worth about $400k.Because that period includes the Great Recession, that is a very good appreciation rate and better than San Diego had over the same period.3% loan is tough to beat as is a property tax that is ~50% of what it would be if you purchased today.  

Detroit, Las Vegas, much of Arizona and Florida had huge revenue declines at the Great Recession.  

We bought cabin 1 right before the Great Recession so on paper we had lost our shirt for a few years.  

My concern.. if these big corporations are buying up a majority of houses, assuming there’s no legislation in place to stop them from doing so or sell them off, now IS the time to buy before they take everything from us over time.. it DOES seem like now or never.Regardless of recession and lay offs in the future, these big corporations will just buy more, they’ll never run out of money. and we will all have NOTHING.

While there are certainly cases where they can make great money, in general your best recession-proof best is likely a more "average" home.

Oil prices are low thanks to China’s recession.

In a recession the STR market will be the first to get hit and your proposal doesn't have an exit strategy as the value of the property along with daily rates would decrease substantially. 

The Averys use to claim the smokies were recession proof without having owned through a recession.  

I also watched Peter Linnenman yesterday on the Walker & Dunlop podcast and he predicts 3 rate cuts the end of this year as lagging rental data in CPI starts to hit, and he also thinks a recession is several years off.

Cash flow negative as we may enter into a recession or at a minimum falling rents and values ...