Brokers may be unnecessary to some sellers in the current market; next year in a totally different market environment sellers may be begging brokers to list their properties.  

The consensus and concern from so many is that you are taking on significant unnecessary risk by not having the experience, or the team, to accomplish what you are working to achieve. 

Addressing the LTR concern: both counties have used grants to boost low-income housing (in the form of apartments that prohibit STRs) rather than imposing broad restrictions.

I imagine that when details are not shared, operators may feel it's tedious or unnecessary to share with investors or they're not confident with what is going on?

With funnels, always start with the end goal and reverse engineer it - if you do it the other way around you'll most likely build a lot of fancy, unnecessary clutter, which we don't want.What kind of leads are you going after and what's your main objective?

A reserve is unnecessary, but I still keep around $15,000 - $20,000 in my account.The point is, that you should sit down and assess your finances to determine what the worst-case scenario may look like, how much you would need to cover it without impacting your life, and whether you will need to build a reserve.

But I just began to feel this person was just starting to ask so much of me to the point of imposing in an inconsiderate way. 

With so many municipalities imposing stricter guidelines for STRs, we are seeing a lot of STR hosts converting to MTRs (which I would argue is trickier than it might first appear).

Use people specialized in this field so that you are not caught up in any unnecessary details but can always make simple transactions without any difficulty.

A 1031 exchange would likely only cost you a fee, plus impose rules on how to use your sale proceeds and when, without providing a tax benefit.