Things that tell a criminal the house is vacant are for rent signs,  no curtains or no mini blinds in the windows, utilities shut off, yard not mowed,  and you get the point. 

The plan is to fit the space with a full BA, BR, mini kitchenette, and a large open living/dining space. 

I'm not familiar with how things run at your auction, every state/county has their own way of doing things, however There may be a title co that hangs out at the steps and will hand out a mini-title report showing positions of everything coming up that day.

A Mini-Split Ductless Heat Pump is one of the most-efficient means of keeping your home or business comfortable throughout all seasons of the year.

What's interesting is that the talk was on acquiring properties by using a trust is used "as the bank" (basically a mini-syndication).

As far as I know, there wouldn’t be a problem with the HOA but I wanted to get some thoughts whether is a good idea to allow tenants to do mini projects?

Similar to what @Blair Russell said, their team is more like a hybrid mini property manager.

Personally, I don't want to own anything that requires AirBnB income to make sense - I don't think mini-hotels and AirBnB will win the land use game here in the 3-5y timeframe.That said, this location is AWESOME as a development play. 

It would have been very expensive to replace all the ductwork in the house (undersized for A/C) or to add 4 mini-split A/C units.After seeing another house across the street sell for $199k (a great comp), I decided to sell.I will be rolling these profits into other larger deals, most likely, outside of (the very blue) Maryland.   

I just had a thought about those mini splits.