At the end of the day, if you aren’t losing money, then no harm no foul.

As a construction inclined guy myself, I’d say keep them away from harmful dusts, or poorly ventilated areas with wet paint and find them things they can clean or trash they can clean up etc.

There is no harm in listing it high & see if you get bites right away.

Don't be scared of the dead, it is the living that can do much more harm to you.

Again, I don't think there is a harm in talking to lenders now to understand what you are looking at, but I wouldn't spend too much energy getting pre-qualified now, if you don't plan to start looking for at least another 6 months. 

Holding one or more properties debt free and out of harms way from mortgage risk while maintaining some debt so you can get the arbitrage of leverage.   

Wholesalers are not getting off the hook, when your agents do not have anything of substance you turn to combing through hundreds, if not, thousands of emails trying to find what would seem like a unicorn in a sea of daisy chains and potentials that you will come to find out are no longer available or were never deals to begin with.

No harm in shopping, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find above 70%.

No harm in calling a lender and trying.

An additional consideration is that you've also got depreciation recapture on the investment portion and that too will be deferred in the 1031.Getting half the gain tax free gets you out of harms way a little bit.