If a tenant comes in to pay multiple charges with one payment, my office manager has to get out the pen and pad to figure and place individual payments instead of something similar to Quickbooks where you enter an amount paid and select which invoices you want it to apply to. 3.

@Michael MingI will preface this with I don’t have any direct experience to offer you… but my guess is that if you are talking about the IRS, there would not be a lien placed on anything in any sort of quick manner.  

I happened to have walked into him and he sorted it all out for me, but didn't want to give me his name until the end...........

It has lis pendens, probates and all sorts of other legal information, filings etc.

Market the unit as having a kitchen + wet bar (eg, selling the not-a-kitchen in the not-a-unit as a feature) and being some sort of "luxury penthouse apartment" or something.

The easiest way to do this outside of some sort of scraping tool (which i recommend digging into), is to develop a solid list of ways to look for deals (not just zillow or mls), and then develop a super specific buy box, then just create custom filters with notifications where applicable, you can also use a VA to look through the various acquisition methods and send you a vetted list every day. 

generally some sort of financial issue that makes a lender say they will not pay so why do you want to take a risk the bank will not take on?

AshleyNormal, however you have wide latitude in the actual agreement you agree to sign, how long, how much commission, that’s not to see individual agents have to agree to your terms, but if you feel uncomfortable with the terms you are free to negotiate or shop around, however an agent cannot legally show you a house without an signed agreement of some sort. 

Look, your smart, you laid out how you can sort your way through all these things and put together the pieces to get things done.

I've actually advised several people about doing this sort of house hack.If you can find a way to close off the areas where you'd like to keep for yourself as storage, then this could work.