They moved out and ended up renting separate houses due to changes in their personal circumstances (boyfriends, etc.)I suspect the folks from SmartAsset also don’t take into account people who sell their home and have cash for a larger DP to reduce the amount of money they have to borrow, ie, to reduce the reliance on the size of their income in relation to price they are paying.

As you know it gets pretty dead up there during the winter so I suspect the income from any vacation rental would be very seasonal as well.

I suspect Mr Big Cheese would quickly drop his moralizing.

When people get only texts or a form, it can seem suspect because that's how scammers operate.

Your time is valuable- if you need to hold for 5 years, as you suspect, well then you'd better be finely compensated for your time(and trust me, there's time involved) and for locking up your capital.

I do know that as your list grows, you might want to look at a campaign manager - regular email providers eventually think that large mailouts look like spam and they get blocked if they suspect thats the case.Campaign managers like Mailchimp and Constant Contact for example, allow larger mail-outs without that risk.

I suspect there's pros and cons?

I get 2 or 3 calls every week from "Suspected Spam." 

@Matt I.I suspect that if you are not getting bookings (airbnb or off platform) his other clients are not either.

I also suspect she waited to the 11th hour intentionally in hopes we would still use her with worse terms.