Also, apart from hardwired vs wireless, I still have the option of alarms in different rooms being interconnected (i.e. if one alarm goes off, they go off all over the house).

If this were an apartment complex, you would have full rights to camera up the common areas. 

As others have mentioned a house/apartment built in 1900, 1950, and after 1980 are very different in terms of capital expenses required.

My family owns REI Nation, and we operate in DFW, Houston, San Antonio, and 8 other cities across the Southeast.

I am currently renovating apartments where most have smaller 5'x7' bathroom and the floor area is less than 24'.

One of the largest competencies of REI is scalability through other people's time (OPT), often times carried out through PMs.If your goal is to own a smaller portfolio, then perhaps doing your own property management makes sense.If you want to acquire medium to large scale apartment buildings, then you probably won't even get a loan from a commercial bank without proof of using a PM with a solid reputation.

Instead of paying just the minimum on the heloc, I would continue the same monthly payments I was paying on the mortgage but theyd be way over the minimum and the excess would be applied to principal and would accelerate me in paying off my apartment.

What if the new tenant cancelled their lease because we failed to deliver a ready apartment to them? 

I started with LTR and moved to STRs and now considering apartment complexes. 

While I can definitely swing a hammer, I know there's a lot I don't know about this world and how to grow it into a successful business -  I'm really looking forward to being a part of the  group and putting in the work to build something significant in more ways than one!