If you haven't signed a lease, yes, you can raise the rent (as long as you don't treat anyone differently and give everyone an opportunity). 

This shows them I am treating them fairly from a cost-perspective, and also builds trust.

What that means is that normally once your holding period has passed a year all the gain from that property or subsequent properties is generally treated as capital gain. 

It is streamlined for filing just one tax filing, but allows to create child series for each asset that are treated for liability purposes as their own entity.

As a beginner, you should be treating every single experience you go through as something to be milked for its learning value.

I'm a strong believer that if you cannot treat your family property, they aren't family.

If you treat this seller differently, then you probably will treat next tenant as your cousin, and treat next buyer of your property as in-law, etc. 

You better put this in place before you get in trouble and get sued, after...no point in closing the barn doors after the horses escaped.An LLC is a legal concept, with no tax advantage - you can have it treated as a disregarded entity for tax purposes, or a S-corp or C-corp (but you don't want to hold real estate in an S-corp or C-corp).If available to you, you should look into Series-LLC for the asset holding entity.

You do not want to ever treat tenants like they are special people.

If seller stays, write up a lease and treat her like any other tenant.