We try to find prospects that also have separate utilities such as electrical and less commonly separate water/gas.

Most commonly duplex, triplex or quadplex.

.- Maintenance & Repairs: act quickly on any request, use the opportunity to upgrade, set expectations for the common areas.

That is 100% commonly done, yes.

Oceanfront homes are extremely limited and commonly ask $1.6M+-$2M++ in the center of town it can be very difficult to secure an STR permit due to saturation (active neighboring vacation rentals) requirements.Lincoln City offers a variety of oceanfront home options, the challenge with oceanfront STR's in Lincoln County is that actively licensed STR's do not transfer and would generally be subject to a lengthy waitlist.

I have already seen the new forms/addendums that will be used here in Arizona, the common one for this will be the Seller Compensation Addendum.The one thing that might happen in your discount buyer agent scenario is you might get a buyers agent who agrees to a lower commission and then the listing agent is offering a co-broke that is higher than he agreed to, well now that buyers agent will only be able to get paid the lower amount he agreed to and the listing agent will keep the remainder, so listing agents could end up getting paid more.As far as your question on what to pay an agent, I view it similarly to hiring an attorney, there are discount attorney's and they might be okay for some people in some circumstances, or if you know the proper procedures and deadlines then maybe you do it on your own without an attorney.

Seems to be more common than ever now that affordability is a challenge.

This is a pretty common issue and isn't generally a bad thing since this lets you know the VRBO's algorithm is pushing your listing out to consumers (Not the right type but still).

On the other hand, apartment syndication offers substantial economies of scale, which seems to be a common transition for many real estate investors, as I’ve heard on numerous podcasts.I would love to hear your thoughts on which route you think I should pursue and why.

There is one book for 49 states and a separate book for California.Software is a common question on BiggerPockets.