They knew the monthly payment component wasn't reliable, so they purchased them, and unloaded them for the "cash profit today" option, as fast as possible, rather than the longer term "collect monthly payments" option (which, if there are going to be monthly payments, is generally more profitable [especially if they were ARMs that go up in interest rate & payment over time{1}], that's why everyone wants you to sign up for a monthly subscription for this or that).

Trying to understand if this is the Collections process where the Debt collector will call the tenant to recover rent before judgement?

These are collectively referred to as a bunch of different things like "non qm", "commercial", "portfolio", and "asset-based" lending. 

So, maybe you do NO work and get paid $0, and your partner does all the property mgmt and collects 8% of the income for that.

So if a home is listed for say $700k and the listing agent is offering a 2.5% commission to selling agent, then you as a RE licensed flipper can either negotiate the price down $17,500 and run the buyers side paperwork without commission or you can offer the $700k and collect your $17,500 commission less the broker split and fees.

Honestly, there are already way too many out of towers and developers from other states and countries who do not live in Houston and understand the culture and what the city is like buying and holding property that actual residents would like to own and actually improve rather than sitting in a room 500 miles away collecting money for nothing.  

Is there anywhere I can collect historical performance data on short term vacation rentals in a specific area?

. :)These strategies are all new to me and I wanted to get some collective thoughts from the team!

At one SFH rental, that's $2,500/month I'm not collecting.

I always use 1.25% of the loan to calculate rough title fees and 3 months of Pre-paids to collect (although 2 is normally enough).