Due to more favorable loan terms (and a bit of impatience/ignorance on my part) we went the traditional financing route for the property, with my wife and I both being on the loan. 

Even 1% rule is not achievable in Austin for the most part unless you doing some non-traditional. 

However, I still learned a lot since short term rentals have unique insurance needs that aren't always met with traditional policies.

Traditional banks tend to not have this product.

Then what we do is look at yout income after the New PITI payment to see what program to use traditional or DSCR for the investment.

You saw a lot of that start to go away leading into the financial crisis, as more traditional retail banks started acting like investment banks, hence a lot of the regulations placed on them.And, as for "why not connect with HNW and family offices", most do.  

Given that this deal was unique due to the inheritance, there wasn’t a traditional negotiation process involved.

Expanding Exit Strategies: To stay competitive and maximize profits, I diversified my exit strategies beyond traditional wholesaling.

What if I use self-direct traditional IRA, instead? 

I'm not sure anything is going to change there anytime soon unless you want to share your common space with guests and go that route, as Airbnb traditionally started as.