I really believe that we live in a time where all the information you need to do just about anything is available for free online.

My contractor has gotten impatient waiting for him and has started taking matters into his own hands (he did the jack hammering of the floors which my plumber said had "complications" and would "take forever to get through"). 

or you can reach out to a broker who can shop 80 lenders in a matter of minutes for you.

An instructor can make it better, but most are online now anyway.

Is risk the what matters most when refinancing?

If you want to understand 5-year outlook, I'd look for multifamily construction data in your area to understand what level of new units is and will be coming online in the near future. 

Maybe that's exactly the right move here.. just wishing that I would be able to find deals that are a tad better to make the numbers work (ie. pencil out a small positive cashflow, to allow for the occasional unforseen issue that is bound to come up, particularly as the portfolio gets bigger)If your business cash flows well, it does not matter much. 

There are a ton of online resources.You could also look at the Arcade1 cabinets as well as the Gamer Legends stuff.

Monitoring open windows isn't feasible in my case, but I can definitely monitor daily electricity usage online  

For contact management like that its awesome to search for specific types of people and locations or just data like "how long does it take to foreclose in texas".We have some other use cases as well that we use to track not only ours but competitors results online and learning what does and does not work for different aspects of the business.