Read up on AB 1482 before making any further decisions in regard to your current situation.I would recommend fixing up and renting out your currently vacant units at market rent and raise the current tenant's rent the maximum cap allowable for this year.

Just be sure to modify your lease so that is says, "Tenant is responsible to pay the rent for all 12 months of the lease, unless they cannot pay the rent for reasons A, B, C, X, Y, and Z, and then they can move out with no penalty." 

Because the financing is different for buildings with more than 4 units, as you may already know, you can't really use a per-unit price on a 4-unit and extrapolate to a 5 or 6 unit :(Instead of looking for comparable sales, you usually end up having to apply a market cap rate to the net income (NOI) of the property, which appraisers call the "income approach".As for what's a "market cap rate", well that's about as much art vs. science as (in some way) choosing good sales comps are.For a B area of Providence I think you'd be safe using a 5% or 5.5% cap rate, but if it was an A area like the East Side you might want to go with 4% or 4.5%.You should also ask around as I certainly haven't done any market survey of cap rates.

Yes.Class A/B are the bee's knees.

In a B or C class, a new bathroom is better than your competition's bathroom, likely.  

Specifically that handles assignments and a double close or an A-B-C Closing.

As for whether or not it makes sense for your rental, I would argue that if you are in anything higher than a B- neighborhood, you should be able to get your money out of it between added value in a refi, decreased vacancy, and higher rent.

My reluctance is that it is in an A -A+ neighborhood and everyone I've listened to has said that it is best to buy in a B-C+/blue collar neighborhood so that your chances of keeping a longer term tenant and avoiding annual vacancies will be low. 

The A/B areas in KC used to be rough but Downtown and the Plaza has caused growth. 

So unless you're fixing something that must be fixed (i.e. roof) regardless, do a cost to rent increase analysis.What I've found is often you cannot justify the cost of upgrades, unless you're prepared to kick out ALL the tenants and reposition the property to a whole different class (i.e. take it from a "C" to a "B").