Specifically, I’d love to hear about best practices for managing shared spaces, screening tenants, and setting up house rules.Additionally, I plan to split the utilities among the tenants—any advice on how to handle this efficiently would be greatly appreciated!

.), but the bedrooms are regular keys, as @Jonathan C. mentioned for the front door, the unit is set up to send me an email when the batteries are low. i also have another student rental ( 8 rooms, 2 entry, 2 units + utility room) one master key and each bedroom has its own key that will get students in the entry, there unit, and there own bedroom. had a locksmith do that one. cost me a few hundred dollars with keying and supplying the locks ( 13 total ). i like both setups but may look into the landlord locks again for my 3rd student rental i just purchased.

Unless a different one would be better that you could suggest   If you are house hacking you can utilize 3-10% down. 20%+ is great to put down but not always possible.

The cashflow should cove ALL of the expenses for the primary (mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc) AND put money in their pocket.

There are quite a number of things that can make utilizing an FHA loan more difficult such as more barriers during appraisal, appearance of low qualification/little cash, typically longer closing period, likely higher interest rate, and PMI cannot be dropped without a refinance if 3.5% down.That said, just chain 5% down conventional loans, and make sure your duplexes pay for themselves.  

@Kyle Trotman If you purchased with a hard money loan conventional lenders will require extensive seasoning to utilize the new appraised value for cash out. 

Or is it better to utilize different strategies?

Salaries, compensation, rent, taxes, utilities, fees, MLS, etc.The flat fee model is a recipe for disaster."

Quote from @Elisabeth Lernhardt: Today I found out, that some of the utilities were not in the tenants name!

So by utilizing leverage you earned $200 more.