I work a lot with investors outside of the US from a tax perspective but from a mortgage perspective, as mentioned above hard money or DSCR is probably your best bet.

CA is hard all the way around with real estate, but if you're willing to jump through the hoops, San Diego is a good place to have a STR in a CA city.

Question: do you happen to know how easy or hard it is to discontinue listing with Booking.com if I don't like it?

You can ask your CPA on the cost segregation short term rental loophole.If your partners credit is bad but you have cash, you can just cosign for the loan or go DSCR/hard money.Dayton is a solid market for BRRRR investing.

From what I've seen in this area right now, it seems like you'd have a hard time paying market LTR rents and making a good spread. 

It's hard to say without knowing more, but I'll throw out some general advice.1.

Hard to say without more info.

It's real estate in markets with population growth, it's pretty hard to lose money if you get an inspection and appraisal."....Wishful thinking at best when buying C/D properties.

Primarily it is because he gets credited with "writing the book on notes" which his hardly is.

I can send you a free guest pass to our general meeting next week and you can network with a couple hundred local investors and meet all kinds of vendors with hard money, private money, trades, title and wholesalers.