The flip side is that I would not be paying that much in fees, because my intention is to flip the property and since I am not planning to build, I won’t have to deal with that many of the HOS’s rules.

The planning phase took about 10 months and we've been in the build phase for nearly 7 months now.

I can’t speak to it though.And I will add another one, because I really had no desire to return to Mexico, but was just reading an article about this topic, and it mentioned most of the places on my short list, and also added Isla Mujeres, so now I plan to explore that area a bit as well.

Looking for the general differences, but one specific question as well, would the 5% work for a 5 unit or also only for 1-4 unit?

It is specifically "Fair Rental Value" that should be included in your plan.

I've been working on a tool to analyze this for Airbnb listings.I work in data science, specifically in marketing research, and I've run analyses like this before.

It would be worth contacting your PMS to find out their plans for direct integration.

At the end of college if that is your plan, then you can keep it for a rental or sell it to do your next deal.

You may want to request the construction drawings / plans for the utilities that were installed to help better understand their impact to your property. 

My plan was to put about 20% down.