He felt spending more time disputing the rejection was not cost effective and i see his point but suspect airbnb recognizes this and uses it to their advantage.  

I am a strong advocate for their effectiveness allowing you to do substantially more with your money. 

Yep for one especially in the early stages a hard credit pull would not be useful, just have them do soft checks for the time being and opt out of credit solicitation: www.optoutprescreen.com I could be biased... that said typically working with one lender than can help regardless of where you're looking and having a relationship with that will provide the easiest and most cost effective route long term. 

Plus for its high cash flow potential, utilizing a 1031 exchange to reinvest gains effectively made this experiment a relatively low risk for me.

I've seen a lot of this lately where GPs are offering outside investors pref equity to effectively "save" the project from foreclosure.

Georgia, a state not mentioned, offers a 20% penalty so if the encumbered deed is redeemed after 1st month your effective rate of return is 240%!

This will effect your ability to obtain financing for quite a few years but may be worth considering.  

@Otis Clayton To partner in real estate effectively, establish a clear structure like an LLC for liability protection or a Joint Venture for single projects.

Since Zillow doesn’t allow live links in messages (even links to articles on their own site), it’s also challenging to direct people to my own website, where integrating a chatbot would be much simpler and more effective.

Whatever I do, I would need to do with a HELOC—effectively financing 100% of the property (down payment and closing financed with HELOC, rest of purchase financed with a mortgage).