Yeah trying to take inflation into account given our somewhat secluded location compared to the rest of the market.

As @Luke Carl said. the value is based on the comparable sales of similar residential properties.

But at the same time there aren't many active comparable rental properties nearby, which makes determining the market rent of a property difficult.I found that using rental listings that are inactive but were recently active provides me with a lot more data for determining market rent.To do this I go to the Zillow rent estimator tool and enter my property's address as well as a (very) rough estimate of the rent.

Rents seem to be going up along with the housing prices. 2/1 seems to rent well compared to the cost of acquiring them. 3/2 that are rent-ready might be overpriced compared to what you could get in rent.

Another example, in the western NC mountains near where I live, most people gravitate towards investing in over-saturated well known vacation areas with lots of amenities, however, there are other stunning areas in the mountains with very low prices (comparatively) that have very high occupancy because hardly anybody has an STR in available in the area.

So it would do you good to see what your total monthly pre tax pay is compared to all of your recurring monthly expenses (credit cards minimum payments, auto loan, etc).

I have found that VRBO customer service is useless, can't solve my problems and they are way more expensive (8% compared to airbnb 3%) VRBO owes me alittle over 1k in past rents and they blame the root cause that my w 9 doesn't match IRS records but no one can seem to tell me how or what field.

Usually a commercial loan is what would be needed here.The main reason it doesn't work with Conventional/VA financing is because they rely on "Sold Comparable Properties" or sometimes called "comps".  

i would search truila, zillow, fb marketplace and other websites that potential tenants find rental properties and compare the prices manually in your area.

From what I understand they do not have enough comparable sales in the surrounding area?