I also knew Cook County was not in a landlord friendly area.

I do not sell my model but I have a friend in the business who offers a much better model than Michael Blanks in my opinion.

I'd love to help by sending over my investor friendly PMs, lenders, GCs, etc.

If anything, have a small sign in front of the house that says who the builder is and phone number (that's common for contractors to do, and also so that neighbors feel they have some to call if there is dust blowing from the site or whatever), and then you may have people calling you asking about availability (people always want something more that they had to chase and can tell their friends the story of how they got the house). 

There is statutory, and as you pointed out, now Fannie/Freddie guidelines, that exempt many transfers from being subject to the Due On Sale Clause...asset protection/estate planning purposes are covered.

Sacramento metro by contrast is more friendly, and there are some areas we target here that do very well for STR.

A 50/50 split, while not uncommon in the world of flipping, is very sponsor friendly, relative to the typical syndication which will typically start at 80/20 or 70/30 splits, with a vast majority of proceeds going to the LPs, along with a preferred return that gives them 100% of the cash flow up to a certain annualized return metric.  

Here is what we have found and I will probably catch some heat for some of the things I have to say, because it does not sound "investor-friendly".

One of my commercial RE agent friends  here moved out there. 

We certainly haven't ruled out investing in Wisconsin, but we have friends and family that live in both CLE and CBUS, so we travel to those markets fairly often.