Ask to buy them a cup of coffee, a beer, lunch, dinner or ice cream...doesn't matter.

You cannot walk down the street, sit in a bar, talk to parents at a playground, attend a ice cream social, help pull a car out of a ditch without hearing how their parent, older aunt/uncle etc worked for Kodak.

I knew that you was going to get creamed when you said that the only ones you could trust were appraisers and Inspector‘s.

We own long term rentals in Rockford which is a great cashflow market, but w shave also been weighing our options to get a STR.

That is the "icing" as you said...with cherries on top...and whip cream while you're at it. 

but I don't really want to risk going through a tough escrow with a novice buyer trying to shave me down with contingencies and unreasonable demands related to inspections... especially in a softening buyer's market. 

1/1's have been our slowest movers here in San Antonio lately, but they are still renting reasonably well.

As mentioned, normally any member of 20% or greater in the LLC will be asked by a lender to be an additional guarantor on any loan issued to the LLC.If any member(s) have a mid-FICO lower than the lender's required minimum, then the membership percentages can be adjusted to accommodate.

CREAM is a facebook group that hosts meetups from time to time.

I am in @Chris Clothier  camp on this one.. a measure of a rental property in a given market needs to be done in year 3.. with a report on year 1 and 2.buying a rental and reporting rents for the first year is quite misleading.. as the first tenant is brand new the house is brand new.. and 80% of the time or more the first year is a cream puff  LOL.so for those that watch along and say hey I am going to see what happens in the first 6 months and if its good I am going to jump in.. well that simply is not enough time in this business to fully understand a property or an area or PM company.. we are all rock star's first year or so.Chris often mentions those that given one year rental guarantee's  he will say  ya ask them to guarantee year 3..