I am a voice of common sense and help them come up with the best way to manage STRs.

Several factors indicate the company is not that concerned about efficiency or ease of customer process: the website, a process that seemed to focus on one issue at a time instead of all issues at once, and consistently poor communications and lack of common sense from the loan analyst we were assigned.It started off very well with the initial point of contact, Austin Lornson, who did a fine job of explaining the general refinancing process, responding quickly and thoroughly to our questions.

Hi, pre foreclosure in all of its permutations, before the bank sends Notice of Default (NOD) or efter which is state even county dependant but often starts a 4 week clock till the trustee auction are the 2nd most difficult deal scenario and IMHO only experienced investors should bother, the 1st most difficult deal scenario are bidding at the court house steps on lord only knows what is being auctioned off sometimes even 2nd mortgages, you need to do so much home work to attempt to reduce your risk at the court house steps...Pre foreclosure no one talks about these issues, always about the nice sounding stuff like "motivated seller" get a good deal etc etc both are usually not the case.- 95% of folks in pre or post NOD want to stay in their house, keep their house inspite of them 100% will loose the house at the auction. 

And plenty of people wholesale mls all the time and get deals it's actually quite common.

I'll throw in my 2 cents on common differences I've seen in my career:CDFIs - Because of their subsidized financing structure, they have the ability to be a low cost lender (and sometimes provide grants).

Or, what’s something you don’t hear discussed often that could help me avoid common pitfalls?

Its a fairly common strategy.

It’s a common practice and I’ve never had any opposition to this provision.If you don’t have an operating company, you could get into contract in your own name and then assign it.  

@Loren Souers I'd have to run the specific scenarios with the rates and fees, but if you're OK with paying the higher closing costs, the Mortgage 1 deal looks good, particularly if you focus on CoC returns.

If your existing rental properties reported their financial performance on your most recent Schedule E, then your lender should be using a net cashflow analysis based on the Sched E figures for your DTI for those properties in most scenarios.