I'm talking to the seller's broker, but I would like to find my own people to assist with the due diligence period, such as an SBA loan broker, an accountant with experience doing QoE for this kind of transaction, and a lawyer.

Give the cost of money these days is around 7%, it would definitely be nice to have a paid off rental.Like Tim said, the 7% is largely irrelevant because your tenants are paying it with the exception of vacancy periods. 

It works like this:(1) Save up enough money for a down payment(2) Buy a single family home that you will Airbnb/VRBO(3) Ensure the “average period of customer use” is <=7 days(4) Materially participate (5) Cost segregate the property, resulting in large depreciation deductions(6) Use the losses from step 5 to offset your W2 incomeWhat makes this possible is that operating an STR is considered “non-passive.”

The Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) is refundable during the Due Diligence (inspection) period, and goes hard at the expiration of the DD period.

I happened to be the landlord and got a very favorable lease with an arbitrage operator and I'm pretty sure they lost money over the period of them arbitraging with me.

The benefit of working with DSCR lenders is that those lenders generally have shorter seasoning periods to use for doing a cash out on the new appraised value- such as three or six months.

Or at least just getting all of your thoughts and numbers on paper (or in a spreadsheet) and mapped out over the time period you're talking about, I think would be a very helpful exercise for you.

The more you pay upfront the lower the rate, but you have to make sure to do the math on what you payback period will be.

This property is in the Extended Use Period though mid-2026.  

Then, you can calculate how much cash this property(ies) is going to eat over the period you plan to hold it and see if what you can sell it for (less commissions, taxes, etc) will produce a profit.