Better to find a roommate that you know for the other room if you decide to do this.

I wish I could help on this, but now you know one thing to look out for (rural properties are sometimes VERY tough for lenders to get behind).Advice would be here to force their hand in communicating, and if they're not living up to your standards, proceed to find another lender that will.

I have read every forum I could find reviewing of each of these and most are fairly dated so it'd be great to have recent experiences with them considering how software changes/hopefully improves with time and development. 

You can easily do this on a spreadsheet, and it will take less time to track than finding and learning new software.

I was hoping to get some advice on how you guys are finding these multi family deals.

Yes I have been playing around with QBO and finding it overly complicated and tricky to setup for STR..I will keep playing around with it but will also check out some of these other suggestions:) 

Find local meet ups and find a mentor in your target areas.

You can literally find answers to all of your questions within the confines of this site.

Hey Conrad,I would look for another background service as this is an important step in finding a potential tenant.

For example, not a beach town obviously, but there is Indio, where STRs are very common and if you look hard you may be able to find a deal that could make sense in this market..