Start by reading the Ultimate Real Estate Investing Guide: https://www.biggerpockets.com/guides/ultimate-real-estate-investing-guide/introduction2.

Do some demos and make sure you feel very comfortable with the one you ultimately select.If you're unsatisfied, it's a huge hassle to have to transition later when you have multiple properties under management.

But I think you may be asking, should you do the rezoning, or leave it to the ultimate developer. 

Any time you transact with a traditional currency it goes through a very complex series of checks that ultimately are centrally controlled by some government.

Start with BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginners Guide (free).

I know this is an old thread but I wanted to see if you were able to get more knowledge on this basement conversion and what you ultimately decided?

The investor ultimately tripled the value of the property.  

Start with BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginners Guide (free).

This documentation will be helpful if you ultimately decide to charge the tenant for repairs.

Ultimately we decided that the cost of doing the cost segregations right now was not beneficial enough since he didn't really have any reason to pay for them and if I would have covered the full cost then the benefit wouldn't have been significant enough to me.That said, I do know there are ways to structure your operating agreement where the depreciation can be distributed to different partners in different ways.