I say, "Well, it gives you a place to stack boxes or store other things like mops or brooms or vacuum cleaners or whatever."

Also, she's probably not "motivated" to sell because we are very good tenants, never any issues from us, been here over 10 years, and have kept it cleaner and nicer than when we moved in.  

Any environmental concerns with any tenant, like a paint store or hobby shop, dry cleaners, pawn shop or print shop?

A lot cleaner and easier than forming a joint LLC, at least for this test deal.

To make it cleaner, refinance the old note with a new note and DOT, then everything goes away. :)

We first talked about splitting the house ownership and profits as a shared long term hold but decided it would be cleaner to just let one person buy out the other. 

In all cases, they sided with me (make sure that either you or your cleaners take as many pictures of the damaged/broken piece), but the higher the price tag, the more rounds you will have to go with them, and they might not pay you back the entire amount.

I would hire a cleaner ASAP also.If the prior tenant didn't complain about roaches, and you didn't see any roaches  (assuming you did a thorough clean out/inspection) --it is possible that the new tenants brought the roaches with them. 

They don't respond to guest complaints, arrange cleaners, or any of the actual management. 

As a new STR owner my biggest surprise has been the amount of gross income (approx. 15-20%) that goes to my cleaners ($130/clean) though they are worth every nickel and the expense is directly paid for by the guests.