However, the higher initial investment, property management complexity, and potential vacancy risks can be challenging.

.• Retirement communities• Syndicates (from initial explorations, little transparency from providers, little oversight - almost leap of faith and trust in provider?)

I was initially very pleased to learn that all had been able to purchase multi family properties; I was not to pleased to learn that they all “wanted out”, but felt they were “upside” down and would have to take a loss.  

Update: I decided I will pay a $500-750 or so to do an initial hydro-jetting of the system. 

@Charlie Hardage, how is paying down the HELOC better than paying down the initial mortgage without the HELOC?

Washer/dryers are often abused, so there's the initial cost of purchase and the risk of increased repairs.

Is it better to keep adding equity by doing work on the houses while I'm renting them then refinance to recover the initial down-payment to reinvest into another property or to pay down the heloc?

The replacement shelves were ordered individually, I was charged the initial inspection fee to tell me the shelves were missing, the cost of the shelves plus markup by the PM, and $67 an hour to "install" the shelves. 

Quote from @Milly Owens: You may be right James, then again you would have a hard time convincing Asser...since the program reimbursed him his initial investment of $1,000 and then paid him $10,000 for the lead!

As much as I'd love to rehab the properties to boost the ARV (which was the initial goal), funds are tight right now to do that so as-is is the way for me to go.Absolutely.