As others have mentioned, you may need to have some patience and see where it goes.  

Yet for owners of rental SFRs, duplexes and condos—not to mention retail and restaurants—COVID-19 threatens to reduce landlords’ rental income, perhaps entirely.

Now those are forbidden here and code calls for 16D common or those structural hex screws you mention.

However, as you mentioned, financing through an LLC means commercial loans, and 9% rates are nothing to sneeze at.

I personally manage my rent by the room property and yes there are some headaches, but as you mentioned it's one of the most viable ways to maximize returns in a high-priced market.

Actually, a friend once mentioned a unit in Eugene that had to be re-leased after a nasty storm tore off part of the roof.. it’s gritty, hands-on stuff like that which rounds out your perspective.At the end of the day, you don’t need a flawless blueprint to get started.

As mentioned elsewhere, breakeven on cash flow is not the same as break even for taxes.Let's make some assumptions:Rental income = $1000Mortgage payment = $400 - but $300 is interest and $100 is principalOther expenses (repairs, advertising, utilities, etc) = $600Depreciation = $250The above scenario creates a break even from a cash flow perspective, however the tax scenario looks like this:Rental income minus the mortgage interest (principal is not deductible) minus the other expenses minus depreciation looks like this:1000-300-600-250 = $150 LossIf your income is over $150,000, then you cannot deduct that loss, but you can roll it over to future years. 

Little did I know I was going to stumble across some books mentioning bigger pockets, start listening to their podcast, and make a post saying this house is now going to be a fix and flip!

But Brandon Turner mentioned Asana is what his company, Open Door Capital, uses (in BP Episode 479). https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

And keep in mind that the rate on the 2nd lien will likely be 10-12% so depending on the cash flow it might not actually yield that much cash to you at closingMore importantly, it's just more debt so ultimately it sounds like you need an income-producing event to actually improve your situation and avoid some of the consequences that you mentioned