I've been wanting to repaint the interior of entire unit a more trendy but neutral color.

I will be traveling essentially cost neutral and should be in the same if not better financial situation later on because I may also pickup some type of remote work using my skill sets after 2-3 months due to likely boredom to fill my spare time.  

White oak plank is neutral and looks fabulous if installed by an expert.

For example, Uptown has the highest vacancy and neutral to slightly negative rent year over year, but other South and NE Minneapolis areas have neither of these issues.

They are for certain A grade areas too offset being cash flow neutral or close to it .

BP,BLUF: Based on raise in HOA/fees in our current home and the decrease in rent based on current market there is a possibility that we would have to rent at cash flow neutral. 

Don't get me wrong, I definitely have a good impression of my would-be partner and his character, but neither do I yet know him well enough to have a high level of trust--so on that front the trust is still kind of nascent/neutral.

This implies you require rent above $2700 to be cash neutral.  

In that environment, most of a passive investor’s concerns related to honesty, transparency, accuracy, and timeliness are managed by the administrator who is a neutral party.

There are some areas where I would pick up the 180k house in an instance even if it was cash flow neutral because there is so much equity upside.