I'm in the training and have found it very helpful, but I'm unclear about the legalities of billing oneself as a private money lender if you are not licensed by the DRE.

If not, you could always maintain 2 separate IRA accounts, one self-directed for private lending, and then another for your traditional investing.

That violates the Takings Clause.MD can be distinguished (in fact MD was mentioned in the decision) in that there IS a process on the books for the foreclosed owner to petition the court for the surplus. 

To add to the confusion, the party that had divided the lots had instead of distinguishing the lots by A and B, used A1 and A2.  

(I distinguish this from towns where you can do Airbnb but only because there's no law whatsoever.)

The reason I’m pointing this out is to distinguish my post here from most of my other posts where I have specific expertise, knowledge and experience in the subject matter.  

How can you distinguish yourself from the other agents who are doing the same things?

Yeah, the operating agreements do not distinguish between GP created docs vs legal filed docs.

Moreover, "[v]olitional unwillingness, as distinguished from good faith inability, to meet contractual obligations furnishes neither a ground for cancellation of the contract nor a defense against its specific performance" (Meisels v 1295 Union Equities Corp., 306 AD2d 144, 145 [2003]).  

The operation of an STR has almost nothing to do with real estate and 100% to do with hospitality, that is where you can distinguish yourself from other operators, provided you made a good decision in your initial purchase.