I also have marketing skill and tech skills.

All short-term rentals have some level of weather risks, I would say.

These two should easily provide the level of coverage you need to protect the assets you have including your personal property equity.  

Build the broadest ranges of skills, knowledge, attitude and abilities and become business lethal.  

I'd recommend keeping the skills focused.

I am brand new and interested in my first foray into real estate investing.People of all skill levels come!

If this guy is an attorney he should be smart enough to know that top level apartments get hot in the summer.

At a technical level you have two paths, either 1) combining the bottom and ground floor units into a larger unit as you suggested above or 2) create a third legal unit.

Happy to share if you're interested.Accounting systems are great: QB, Stessa, Digb but the reality is you want to track a few things at a high level, this will make your life a lot easier when you sell/need to report income/loss, and accounting systems won't always make this easy. 

(b) these persons that would have been non-productive are now productive (c) people are getting trained and learning employable skills (d) companies are highly incentivized for GROWTH (e) you've effected stimulus in net housing production but with NO added tax revenue draws because it's via an offsetting factor AND arguably a potential net GAIN via expansion of industry leading to mor employment and more income tax revenues.