37 units, 5 story, no basement, flat roof, has the 1980's required retrofits that connect the floor/ceiling joists to the metal plates on the outside along with the other reinforcement beams on the inside of the walls and the parapets reinforced with large angle irons on the roof, has several cripple walls in the roof space, and a few windows at the front lobby bricked up.

You've got to chisel it out, find and fix the leaks, redo the concrete, replaster the gypsum, redo the interior stucco, prime with metal or styrene primer and paint.

I plan to install metal roofs, energy efficient appliances, plant small pollinator gardens, and eventually install solar panels (when solar energy becomes more affordable and if my market will allow higher rent for a lower electric bill).My question is if pollinator gardens could be a liability as they attract bees and other stinging insects. 

That's probably the result of arcing caused by putting metal items in there such as pieces of foil or a bag with a wire twistie on it.

However, if one of you goal is to preserve you newly inherited cash, have you thought about investing at least a percentage of that cash into precious metals, like gold, silver etc.

These are metal kits, that are already assembled with everything you need to attach to bed frame.

But after calculating it out, I realized that if I am going to take real estate investment seriously, I just need to borrow for the long haul at a low, fixed rate, and keep the pedal to the metal.

On a quality scale typically Dollar General first, then Dollar Tree, then Family Dollar.A lot of theses dollar stores like to go in sub par locations ( Weak suburban to rural) and construction for most of them is poor quality (sheet metal sides and back).

We need to get out of this thought that self-storage is just rows of metal boxes with doors on a asphalt parking lot. 

I think scrap prices are down, so they may be holding on to metal waiting for prices to go up.