It was not our intent to become investors or Short Term Rental experts.

You don't need to be an expert on the US housing market as much as you need to know which neighborhoods are holding their value better, or that rental prices are continuing to improve within, or which builders are building and where, and so on. - Avoid making predictions of the future, regardless of the direction the market is headed.

That's why its important to have expert advice.

The last notification was via certified mail and mentioned that the issue could be referred to an attorney. 

So, I could conceivably certify a 1-yr owner occupant, perform a live-in rehab, and re-fi at 100% appraised value?...

That's not saying that two guys with money can't partner up and invest, but when one guy has no money and the other is funding the deals, that gets away from "investing" and getting in the business of dealing in notes.You can go further too, you can have investors, but there are legal hoops to jump through and compliance is required, it's not a newbie arena.Just saw the marketplace ad, saw the site, didn't listen, but using the words crowd funding and note investing together is nothing short of scary and I can assure you, you aren't listening to note and finance experts! 

Computer models also benefit from lots of tuning, machine learning, and if the company is good some really expert tweaks to take into account things newer folks would miss.Doing it manually is great because a person can sometimes easily see something that the computer model misses, and can take into account other things - conversations with owners, etc - that the computer model simply can't.Generally I find the computer models do better on cookie cutter deals, and people do better on unusual deals.

Every area is a different and I am no expert in your market.

I'm no expert, but they become expert in the rent control laws and legal exceptions and loopholes.

I'm no expert so I'll defer to someone else if incorrect but you wouldn't actually "own" the property for a year during their redemption period so you couldn't get a loan on it since you won't own the property yet.