I feel like long term the Hudson County area properties will continue to appreciate as demand gets pushed here from an increasingly expensive New York market.Are there any experienced real estate investor's with their brokerage license that can sit down with me discuss my options moving forward. 

I am wanting to engage more frequently with people more knowledgeable and/or experienced than me.

This deal is probably outside what you should acquire at this point.And what creative financing you can do depends upon what the seller will agree to.I suggest taking this deal to your local REIA meetings once you have it under contract and let someone more experienced do the deal and explain to you what they did.

Review their management agreement.

But with rule of thumbs like the 50% rule, it looks pretty good.I'm using a combination of the BP calculator and the 4 square method to analyze this, but I'm wondering if there are more experienced investors out there who could help me out and see how I can improve and what I might be missing in my calculations. 

That might be an option for the future, but I don't think I am experienced enough to go that route yet. 

As a result there is a very real danger that hosts will be penalized, receive bad reviews on social media, and even lose their accounts on Airbnb/VRBO which could quite realistically cost them their businesses if no consideration is given to grandfathering in owners and hosts who are already operating more than one STR per lot, not to mention it seems fair to give owners and tenants a chance (as was mentioned) to recoup their significant investments (as one neighbor mentioned--her life savings) which they made under the existing laws." 

If I were to buy a duplex and borrow the 20 percent down payment from someone, in this case about 35k, is this subject to review under the Patriot Act?

Now on the surface it seems like a pretty decent idea; however i have a few questions for them (which i've asked) but  I wanted to know from this groups perspectives the pros/cons that you all may have experienced in similar situations.

Because of exactly what you have just experienced, I like guaranteeing my profit.