When you sell, you may qualify for the home sale exclusion ($250K single / $500K married) if you’ve lived there at least two of the last five years, but any depreciation claimed during the rental period must be recaptured and taxed.The biggest thing you will see is something called non-qualified use.

We have exclusively 5-star reviews before your negative one.

Option - In legal language, a real estate option is an agreement that grants the party owning the option, the optionee, the exclusive, unrestricted, and irrevocable right to purchase property from the party selling the option, the optionor, during the specified period of time that the option is in effect.I'm wondering if it is possible to control a house using an option to purchase in order to renovate the property (fix and flip) without actually buying the assett with a HML. 

Keep selling and use the tax free 2 out of 5 years capital gain exclusion up to $250k per spouse.4.  

If you are married and file jointly, the exclusion increases to $500,000.

Whereas material participation in your LTRs is more "exclusive" to time you spend in your LTRs that you own.

How can someone be in the STR business for the long haul and NOT do everything possible to establish a business model where they’re almost exclusively direct to customer of through low fee platforms?  

It's hosted by Eugene Nilus and it's in San Mateo. https://www.meetup.com/exclusive-bay-area-real-estate-group/You could attend this one and see what you like about it (for your own potential future meetup).

Sale and use the 2 out of 5 capital gain exclusion.  

About 20 years ago we moved to exclusively financing and investing in commercial property.