You need to bite the bullet and raise rents on the hold-over tenants.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet for finding deals. 

Live in Lowell, buy two houses, save time, energy, money on your commute, and embrace the arts scene and cultureS-- plural emphasized.

Hi Michelle, A general help on strategy read my paper on buying rentals, linked off my profile 1st paragraph, How To buy a bullet proof rental portfolio.A 2nd help is if you are serious about setting up a system, team and set of local peers, you should consider joining the local REIA that I ended up choosing for all my local support, contractor referals, legal helps etc.   

Life settlements, oil\gas, energy\power, etc. etc. 

I’m new to real estate and have not done any deals yet but I wanted to see what made people chose where to put their energy into.

Total of 11 single pane windows and wanting to get energy efficient replacements .

You can also charge back electricity generated from the PV and act as the utility/energy provider.

  :)Good luck, lots to consider but in the end, hopefully just small inconvenience of time and energy until you are back on track to passive income.  

Perhaps you purchased a top-of-the-line boiler and your energy costs are 25% lower because of that...