We were able to buy low in a good neighborhood since the home was in need of some work, mainly needing cosmetic work and some deferred maintenance.

Personally I would defer this question to someone with design experience, not sure I have seen too many on here commenting.You could do something neutral but remember especially with the rug if it is light color it will likely run quickly.

The interior was outdated, the landscaping was overgrown, and several deferred maintenance issues were apparent.

This would allow you to indefinitely defer the tax on the property and use it to purchase larger property/properties in a nicer appreciating area.

Point being that property you acquire 1-2 years ago is likely to be subject to deferred maintenance and capex, so their "long term" performance in rankings 1), 3) might skew poorly in year 1-2 but may pickup  after you've found and fixed all the hidden issues.I know if i did this exercise across my portfolio, the recently acquired ones wouldn't be fairly "stacked" because of all the year 1-2 cost build up from what the seller deferred, but have good chances at being future performers in years 3-5.Maybe that's why you have 2) and 5) but curious your general thoughts here are for evaluating this. 

On paper some of these buildings had amazing metrics, excellent cash on cash returns, cap rates, etc, but when I looked at the buildings I found the neighborhoods were rough, there was poor management in place, there was lots of deferred maintenance to address.

Note I strive to minimize cash flow because it gets taxed versus other RE return are easy to defer or avoid the taxes.  

Only $1k of work was needed right away to deal with deferred maintenance issues on the property.

We sold a house with a low rate that would have cash-flowed really well because I saw the future deferred maintenance.

A client of mine had a deal in Ohio where deferred maintenance became a problem because their manager cut corners.