After assessor comes out and consults with insurance company, they'll send demo guys out to come do demo work and remove wet drywall, insulation, etc. they'll usually put down dehumidifiers and let the place air out a bit to see what actually needs replacing and what was able to dry out.

It might be that this couple that owns the house is just getting their feet wet with having someone else managing the property and they want to get comfortable with your management style as being what they want.

Stuff sounds real cool and worked out on paper but if it were that simplistic, wouldnt most people just do that?

It’s a lower-risk way to get your feet wet while you’re learning.

For example:-A tenant complained about the AC not cooling, so I replaced the entire unit with brand-new equipment.

Hopefully it isn't too challenging to get our feet wet into a good deal with how hard the economic climate is at the moment 

That's cool.

In our student houses we use a programmable thermostat, but our building monitoring system has its own sensors and can override the wall thermostat and will not allow the temperature to get below 10C (50F) ... we are presently testing a new software load that will also prevent them from cooling the house too far in the summer.

My son and I go shooting most every weekend the Tillamook  forest has shooting lanes and its really cool up in  the big timber..

I would both buy a property to get your feet wet and at the same time make a plan to scale.