If the claim can be disputed, OTA disputes it and makes it hard to collect and the host may simply give up.i think pm, airBnB, guest and LL all know who was responsible for the vape in the toilet, but ota did not charge guest or pay for it and gave the guest a discount (a discount for an issue that the guest was responsible for).  

This a great option for high income earners who simply do not have the time for real estate.

I tell my clients all the time that the quality of your property will directly determine the quality of your tenants.This is a very important rental property investing fundamental most new investors always forget or ignore simply because they are just too desperate for  "Cash-Flow".

Jay what you've got to understand about Josh is the fact he is simply lying.  

If I had been tracking the assets via accounting, I would simply make a journal entry showing the LLC's assets and liabilities going to zero and transferring them to the Holding LLC or the LLC Members.

Gator lending is simply "transaction funding" and doing "2nd mortgages".

Will they be doing other types of work like getting through the financing, becoming the guarantor, finding the deals, crunching the numbers, doing the accounting, or are they just simply doing less work?

Is it best to simply increase rent by a fixed amount (e.g., $700) to cover this, or are there other strategies for handling utilities in this situation?

For consulting with a CPA.As mentioned above you can simply take monthly distributions, but what is most important is how you are set up. 

Without rent control i either raise their rent far above market rents so they give me notice (my preferred method) or i simply do not renew their lease.