It sounds like you have a bad pm if they are ignoring when you are trying to contact them. 

My concern is that I might be over leveraging myself if I try pull out a 20% down payment for a DSCR loan.

They were trying to pin down how long I would live there (and would not have liked the 1 year answer).

After debating local vs. or OOS, it seems like prudent advice to try to start locally with long term MF in so cal. 

I try my best to stay motivated and focused even though had a few rough experiences on other projects before with them.

This was a no money down deal was a tri-plex, duplex, SFR and studio all on a few city lots.

If a unit is $1500 without water and another unit is $1650 because it includes water that Averages $150/month with tenants that are not conserving because the LL pays the water, the $1500 unit will get many more people to look at it when trying to fill the vacancy. 

Funny because I’m a physician trying to get to retirement with STRs-not sure if it’s going to pan out but being in a city with lots of tourists is helpful.

That’s actually very similar to what Im trying to do, I’ve heard a number of good things with section 8.

Consider a bigger cabin if you want to try to grab a huge equity capture over the next 2 or 3 three years.  2,000 sq ft cabins that were generating 120k a year gross and selling for 850k to 875k are now hitting 85k to 100k and going for 675k to 725k.