They can be valuable and lighten your load, hopefully.  

He's looking to lighten his load and ease into retirement, write a book, travel, etc.

If you hire a team (i.e. contractor, admin, and bookkeep) just to name a few that will lighten your load, two things will happen.

Other than that I could provide some financial assistance to lighten the burden.

I don't mean to be negative here, but these things happen with real estate and is the reason we budget for things going wrong.It's hard enough to get insurance to reimburse for replacing HVAC when it's been ruined by lightening, let alone paying up front directly to a HVAC company for servicing, I guess unless something happened that would cause you to need servicing and is also something that insurance covers.your best bet here may be to find out what questions insurance has and ask yourself.

Was there a lightening strike as the electrician suggested that burned out the components, I don't know.  

Most people hate sales people, but once they see you're just someone trying to do a job, they lighten up.

I've been doing more of that lately since COVID has lightened up the traffic. 

If my numbers were right the Eastside had an insane average of 2 days on market in January - I'm noticing single family homes heating up considerably here in Seattle as well, while more multi's seem to be hitting the market within Seattle than usual (likely lots of folks like @Brian Hughes are considering lightening up their Seattle portfolio in advance of more regulations). 

You could lighten the room with fabric choices.