Ive been using the same for many years now and its my foundation for operations, follow-up, workflow management and communications. 

Hard money, private money, joint ventures, even lines of credit secured against existing assets—there’s a ton of capital out there looking for strong operators.

Fannie Mae will allow you to transfer the deed to an LLC if you decide to try to go the conventional route, but the loan would still be in your names and you'll need to pay a title company a second time post-closing to do this  for you. 3) I can't speak for the area so no comment there4) If you're self managing, make sure you find vendors you can trust in the area since you won't be able to easily verify if an HVAC guy, plumber, etc. is trying to rip you off and tell you to buy something you don't actually need. 5) Make sure you have clear alignment of goals and a clear operating agreement that spells out what to do if those goals start to not align in the future since you'll be jointly obligated to these properties. 

If the risk of having to refinance into a new loan is a big deal for you, then you might consider simply operating in your own name without an LLC.

We actually CAN'T explain what we are seeing if we are operating on the "purely rational actor" hypothesis (as you implicitly observe), we MUST include highly irrational and emotional individuals to explain what we are seeing.- Investor uncertainty.

Because of the high operation costs we never add electric baseboard heat. 

That affects your loan amount and then principal & interest payment.2) Estimate rents based on recent rental comps3) Account for all operating expenses such as property taxes, insurance, repairs & maintenance (landscaping, snow removal, cleaning etc), property management (if applicable), vacancy, utilities (what does the tenant pay vs what you would pay?)

Currently operating and cashflowing, listed for sale What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

And I also realized that we would have to re-tool our operations, which are 100% specialized to the type of property we have.So you don't have to go bigger, unless you want to.

As a sole operator, you have all the policies and procedures in your head and can apply them to many properties without referring to a binder.