If you are able to network with someone that can give you consistent deal flow and partner with people that will provide the funding you will be in really good shape.

Many if not most people don't think about this. 

Part of the value of the STR is that we will plan to use this property 4-8 times per year.The property is a few hours from the major metro that I live in, and is a vacation destination for lots of people in my area.

People like to fight on me on this and there can be exceptions, but for a ton of different reasons, they dont normally make great investments. 

At a high level, this is generally the path people take - we see a lot of people have success in this route - start building the portfolio with banks, low down payments, and then **generally** when you hit around 5 or so properties - it starts to make sense to switch over to LLCs, its too hard to qualify/deal with paperwork of banks and switch towards private lenders like DSCR Loans - (LLC friendly, easier) to scale past 5 or so.

A lot of people try a flip with a family and then their family is not happy when they are never home.

It's funny that over time usually people fall into the latter; or some combination.

So with that I'm curious to know how people are effectively reaching out to homeowners via Text blast while still staying compliant.Also if they are any SMS services that you recommend.

People always go for the cheapest financing, quit claim in to an LLC and go about their lives, when they've essentially done nothing to protect their personal assets. 

While the stock market is on the roller coaster, getting people to invest in real estate right now is just as challenging or even harder for passive investors to invest in real estate.