Think like company like homes or zillow or local exp team that could offer a very efficient buying process thus could offer more attractive buyer commission, especially at expensive home price above 1 mil area, that would impact heavily on heavily-dependant commission based broker. 

That kind of analysis just look at prices without taking into account the buying power of the local buyers, which makes it completely flawed.Short-term rentals haven't been banned per se.

What does your local law say about security deposit returns?

But if they are happy with 5% then it can still be competitive for you to give them that and pay the withholding taxes because most local hard money lenders will charge much more than 7%.

I also talk to a local rental management company tomorrow to see what their projected rent would be for the property.

Next, I would go to a local meetup and see if you can connect with other MTR operators for more information.

I am from North NJ so very expensive locally and not sure what type of investment to get into out of all the options.

We are local here in Pittsburgh and very familiar with the Lawrenceville market.   

To tackle this, start by gathering data on average rents for similar SFHs in your area through local listings or realtor consultations.

However, I don't wish to pay a ton of fees - just to have MLS access last year I had to to pay CAR+NAR+Local Association+ MLS fees.