Shortly after the crash my tenants learned that condo developers were renting out luxury apartments in the area for around the same rents I was charging so I was forced to lower rents. 1200/apt 2 1050/apt3. 

So if the homeowner saves energy or goes on a long vacation, they still get charged 100%.

If you got your credit decent you can start soft shopping for conventional/fha home loans if you didnt do so well improving  your credit this is where you start looking for private  lenders, partners and investors.

Are you not charging the guests a cleaning fee?

I purchased the home with a conventional mortgage and used the grant to help with downpayment and closing costs. 

Conventional mortgage with 20% down How did you add value to the deal?

First is that its difficult to quantify the amount to charge like you indicated.

Shop around for debt to see what is available and model the various structures to see how the different terms impact performance.The tradeoffs will be fixed vs. floating rate, conventional vs bridge vs CMBS vs bank vs agency. 

There seems to be a convention to hit just about every weekend. 

All this turkey does is charge you for some "training," so you will be "prepared" when you go out looking for lots for him, but curiously, he buys none or very few of the lots he's sent.