Even if I did that, the first year itself would end up only paying for the furnishings.This might be a broad question, but here it is - with a $1,450 mortgage, insurance, taxes payment, could / would a nice 3/2 about 40 minutes north of Nashville downtown net enough to be worth it (again, my "worth it" would be netting $1,500 a month on average after mortgage, insurance, listing fees, management fees, cleaning services, etc.)?

I think SFR's are easier and even if someone wants to go to multi-family, SFR would be a good place to start.SFR's are pretty easy to buy and sell as there's a broad market.

Sprinkle these into the portfolio and it will get you to 10k faster.Here's the issue, I'd say in more than 75% of the markets in the US (broad guess), the 1% rule is a thing of the past. 

I live in an area with very large incomes, and low house prices compared to the rest of the country - there's dozens of cities and towns in Canada like this, so don't paint the market with a broad brush. 

A few suggestions, not for better search results, but these will help get guests who view your page to book - your first 5 photos should show an array of views, because when viewing on a laptop or desktop, all 5 are visible at the same time. 

We still get the odd theft from time to time but it's easy keeping a finger on the pulse when we only do 3-4 rehabs per month or so.Just had one recently but couldn't tell you when it happened prior to that.It's just the nature of the beast and could happen anywhere.At least we don't get car windows smashed by junkies and bags stolen from cars in broad daylight like in San Fran haha

If you want broad lists unfiltered, just tell him.   

Zillow's API is no longer offered (or they make it extremely hard to access these days - have had no luck finding an updated link/page for it), Redfin has broad-stroke CSVs you can download that only give 5-10 fields of info and not often at the metro area, you can't legally create a tool to crawl these websites...I'm looking for 1 (or a handful of sources) to pull together basic metrics at the metro/city level for US real estate.

I think the question is probably too broad to answer. 

Broadly speaking, there are two types; offsite (like SFR, small apartments, etc) and onsite (large apartments with leasing offices on the property).For offsite, I usually see 8-10% of collected rents, half or all of late fees and 1/2 to all of the first month's rent.