If I understand what you're saying correctly, no, it doesn't have any balloon payments.

It does sound odd to me that there are no inspections allowed.

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

The odds of that happening in 2025 are pretty slim.

Odds are your newer builds are on the outskirts of a city into the suburbs where people fight to get a property if it’s affordable.

There are a lot of ways to crash and burn, so increasing the odds of succeeding long term should be your highest priority. you can always sell your local assets once you're comfortable managing rentals and ready for a market that better-suits your criteria. btw, kudos for being self-aware of your limitations.

When you own a couple of units, the odds of there being unexpected vacancies that overlap each other are usually low, but when you acquire more and more real estate, the odds of tenants moving out around similar times increases. 

C+ we will do but we know it's a net 0 so it's on value of relationship because odd's are we will loose $ on 3/4 of those.

I realize that there are variables from market to market and property to property that could make VRBO more effective for a given property, but my understanding is that in general Airbnb bookings get out to such a dominant start in regard to percentage of the bookings, that VRBO and other lesser OTAs have trouble catching up.

I find it odd that this isn't a more standardized practice.