Comparable rentals go for between $1200 and $1500 a month.

Also you should get some quotes to compare, state farm usually have reasonable landlord policy.

My real estate tech startup Clever, based in downtown STL, is a licensed brokerage, and everyone on the team had to become licensed agents -- but given that our full-time jobs are at a startup, none of us are "realtors" in the traditional sense. 

If not you have to go the traditional route of hiring an Architect and then a GC.

If not, I would recommend doing that and comparing the prices. 4) $900 in property taxes?

My guess is that this will drive down rents to the point where they would compete with the more traditional apartments in the downtown area.

Not to mention the fact that the convention center is a big draw all year, there is a thriving downtown, and the winters are extremely mild compared to a majority of the US.

I'm going the traditional route of a conventional mortgage, fighting underwriting, etc.

The downside is restrictive guidelines, a ton of paperwork, lack of flexibility.Commercial types of financing have pros that are flexibility in guidelines and structure you can do all sorts of stuff from substitution of collateral to partial lien releases on blanket commercial mortgages to cross collateralization and many others, less documentation than conventional financing products, use of debt coverage ratio (DCR) as opposed to Debt to income (DTI) and if you compare DCR to DTI the commercial lenders go up to 80% DTI since the reverse of 1.25x DCR is .80 or 80%.There are downsides to commercial financing and that is the convenants with in the mortgage note that can allow the lender to call the note so make sure to read all the definitions for what substantiates a "default," by the lender you'll be surprised by the definitions and language at times. 

Traditional landlording is the least profitable and riskiest way to hold property.