This is a task to handle carefully and at arms length. 

I think the idea of planning on selling 1-2 lots per exchange might be easer to handle.

There are rental management tools like Stessa, Baselane, Innago, and many others that include income/expense tracking that handles all the accounting tasks and reporting you really need for rentals. 

As someone who has read Harry Potter, it seems the best way to get the attention of the landlord is to send a scary looking giant to their home residence with a kindly worded letter.More seriously, I was on the other side of the coin previously where my wife put the ads up under her accounts instead of mine, so I couldn't check them without getting on her phone and I was inundated with people looking to see the property (probably 50 over a 5 day period) and was trying to send semi-personalized notes to each one--and it all ended up being too much to handle and I ended up ghosting or not replying to many people after I found an applicant. 

How to handle the requests in a timely manner while keeping expense down.

I 100% agree with everything JD said, as his approach is exactly how I handle clogged pipes for all of my rental properties. 

Again, a buyer's agent working for you would handle all of this nonsense.

Building relationships and finding the right deals will be key to your success - also make sure to start out small and go from there - don't get into something too big/you can't handle.

How does one handle requests for housing on FF that are way below your target rent?

This is something I would have to dig into your background on to properly advise on which asset class might be better for you and also how much management intensity you desire and/or can handle.3.)