Subsequently, they lost all of their local employees (I even hired one for my personal properties).

At that point, your ENTIRE ESTATE  is exposed and subject to discovery in subsequent litigation.I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice.My $0.02 ...

The sooner you pay off 5 units, the sooner you can use that cashflow for property management + paying the 6th unit off in cash in the very first year (and for every subsequent unit!!)

Subsequently, I took out another HELOC on the rental property itself and it has not been used. 

My recommendation is to start by truly understanding what owning your properties in an LLC will do for you before spending money on entity formation and the subsequent transactional costs.

Subsequently, there are few markets that have achieved better cash flow over a long hold.  

Using these as a template I have subsequently setup all NY/CA LLCs on my own.

The first descale took over an hour and subsequent take over 30 minutes. 

Each time you consult a lawyer, you receive a different answer, and the subsequent lawyer may provide a completely different solution or, even worse, refute what the previous lawyers have said.One of the primary issues is their inherent biases.

Putting less down may subsequently put you in a break-even scenario or possibly even a negative cash flow.