.), the location, depth, and capacity of utilities to service the site - including public utilities (sanitary, storm and water services), franchised utilities (power, gas, cable), capacity of the local streets to accommodate additional traffic from your development...Be sure to find out if there are any specific local ordinances you need to satisfy (possible tree & wetland surveys, together with any necessary tree & landscape or wetland mitigation plans) and whether there are any concerns from municipal departments (e.g. hydrant locations from the fire department, storm inlet and retention requirements, as well as asphalt / concrete road requirements from the engineer), entrance requirements from the road commission (left turn and passing lanes at the site entrance), etc.Once you get past all this you can finally prepare a preliminary site plan and enter the political arena to get preliminary site plan approval, and to address any concessions the board and neighbors want from you to overcome their objections to your development.

It needed a pretty good amount of repairs in order to make it retail ready.

That fee would be clearly stated in the lease.I would contact the Consumer Affairs department at the Texas AG office.

Hey Scott,You want at least a 15% discount from Retail price, probably more.

@Dayana Castellon the only marketing that would make sense is marketing Airbnb & VRBO are NOT covering already.Maybe market directly to insurance companies looking for rentals for their clients needing temporary housing while their fire-damaged home is being repaired.Corporate travel departments might be another option.Hospitals with resident doctor programs.The challenge will be doing this marketing efficiently enough to make it worthwhile.

This is like your retail office.

Set up an appointment with the town building department. 

It's better to sell fewer home for retail than build homes at loss.

We operate a small retail business out of commercial space in the building with the 4 residential units, which pays me a W2 salary and my wife has a part time W2 job at a vet clinic. 

Unfortunately, I don't think it's realistic that you will find a generic commercial lease online that checks all the compliance boxes for your state, city, and county.There are limited service property managers that will do retail tenant placement (rather than full property management, which it seems like would be overkill for this one commercial unit you manage), and this would be included as part of that basket of services.You could also hire a lawyer, but I think that property management company will be more cost effective.