This family member offered me incredible terms out of the kindness of their hearts, yet, I relayed to them that I'd like to treat it just like a bank finance.

This site is incredible but you need local contacts as well.Good luck

@Christian Espana Northern WI is generally STR-friendly since cabin rentals are incredibly popular in these areas but always double check with the city/county.

@Sebastian Giraldo is a real estate broker I recently met that has been incredibly helpful and specializes in STR in the Miami area - would speak to him! 

(For me personally we chose an outside management company as they already have the right contacts procedures etc in place and appear to have a great reputation and I was impressed when I spoke with them, but thats not for everyone)- When searching for condos/condohotel produce a lot higher gross revenue than ocean view but the closer to the water generally is always better in revenue- Make sure to have your agent recommend or do your research for mortgage brokers that do condotels as a lot of mortgage companies will not finance these type of propertiesFeel free to connect with me and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have!

By the way my job is incredibly stable but it is the red-tape of 'those are the rules' that has left me frustrated.

It's incredibly hard.

Thanks so much for all your responses – incredibly helpful!

@Brian Briscoe and @Brian Burke make great points.The level of risk related to interest rate volatility has added an incredible amount of additional risk to MF investing, and it is a non-linear change.

I thought I'd share some of the data I produced as it may help you in your evaluation of this market.West Michigan and particularly Grand Rapids is experiencing an inventory shortage of available homes to purchase and rent.