The critical component here is your intent to hold for rental, investment or business use.

What's funny is airbnb is such a left wing company and very likely is politically aligned with the politicians that are after them.

The prior owner (and this is far too often the case) has not replaced the major components of the property (either milking it as a landlord or putting it off as an owner).Then we have a "hot potato" where they sell (and often reap some appreciation) without updating the property or putting money into it.

If they push back against any of these components, especially recording the documents with the assessor, you might want to reconsider the partnership.  

As long as you know that, you can try out different strategies that align with this goal.

Once we get into spring and it starts to rain this will give us some control over runoff and we need this work done before the stucco component anyway.

You mentioned access to the MLS, which is one key component to finding deals but what will happen when you do find that deal?

So if you look at interest rate exposure at a component of future risk (I know I do, others may not) I'd lock-in whatever I can to reduce that risk across the portfolio.  

This can damage the rel'p.The % also aligns your interests, whereas hourly rates can reward inefficiency.

Also, if this is going to be a high end home, the appliance budget is a bit low for appliances that will align with the over all high end design (just coming from another contractors perspective!)