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.

@Shervin Golgiri Seller not paying buyers agent commission wont have any bearing on finding qualified buyers in a sellers market . 

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. 

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:) 

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

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

Turn over is typically higher than a normal rental, so you have to get good at finding and screening tenants/ house mates. 

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

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..