I hope this hleps!

Given the short-term nature of mid-term rentals, including utilities can make your property more attractive to potential tenants, but it’s essential to factor that into your overall rent pricing.The best way to go about this is to ensure your listing is visible to your target audience.

This all is dependent upon you getting the carpet from HD of course.

Is this a good deal relative to the area?

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

this will lead to a lot of rationalization of bad deals, into perceived good ones. 

The best way to utilize this platform is to utilize it frequently...be active, provide value!

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I want to say an indisputable "No", like the others, but hopefully this isn't a case of the old landlord being upset about something else and trying to bad-mouth the woman, but I'm not sure how you could verify that.

But to date, I've just set my rents at a rate that accounts for me having to pay the water bill - and informed the residents that each year I'll increase the rent based upon my expenses (including water), so keeping the bill down helps me to help them.But one problem this could cause is if increasing the rent to cover the water bill then places your rent above the market rate.