Air Conditioning, if an city is hit or miss with A/C units does this play a large factor on rent and/or property values?

The city has and will always have potential, but they need to hire/elect outside people to run the city like a business. 

You need to hire a PM, co ASAP, 

Hire the right contractor, and time boxing.

You can't hire inhouse for what they are charging.  2. 100% of first months rent is high. 

Don't forget to familiarize yourself with local laws and regulations; hiring a local attorney can help navigate the legal aspects.

I recommend hiring a Bookkeeper who is Independent of the PM and knows what they are doing because if they PM is doing weird things they can catch it and have no care if you fire that PM. 

That said, people say it saves maybe 30% vs hiring a GC, and it might be even more for that in our case, hard to say until we're done.We've had good experiences with the RWC bldg dept, inspectors are nice and helpful.

I would not let some arbitrage my property because I can do it myself and cut them out :)Even if you are not interested you could hire a good local manager and still cut them out.

We're currently working in the business quite a bit right now, but as it grows we'll be hiring to have it fully staffed with passive income to cover our current expense plus more.