Other advice, especially that pertaining to tax benefits, is also highly appreciated!

I generated the list by combining Zillow's smooth, seasonally adjusted home value dataset (ZHVI) with their rent index (ZORI) for metro areas.

We do a new FULL lease every time because laws change, terms adjust, and it's negligent to do anything less.

There are lots of benefits that come with a closed system than the downside of editing stages. 

But almost zero percent of NOD owners can make it through the selling / moving out process go get this benefit. 

The mortgage is currently under my name, so I’m unsure what benefits, if any, I’d gain from using an LLC in this situation.

They can help you with tax planning at the beginning of the year to help ensure you are taking advantage of as many tax benefits / incentives that you can.

There might be some added tax benefits for this if you add in depreciation to help push you to a lower tax bracket. 

Do they include energy tax benefits within their study?

Sometimes 5 in the case of 9% LIHTC deals but all the way up to 15 as I’ve seen in 4% deals.  9% is competitive meaning there’s only a certain amount of projects awarded each year by your states HCR.  4% is not competitive and is usually more appropriate for large projects because 9% will get allocated to projects of smaller size so as to spread the benefit.