You can get a much better return on your investment elsewhere and with $500k you can buy 3 homes or a 4 unit.  

Your other questions are better suited for an attorney to avoid misinformation.

There are also other strategies that can work better currently, depending on what your goals are. 

That's why we require clients to spend a couple days with us in Milwaukee up front, so we can get on the same page and determine an asset quality.Hint: the hood looks much better on a spreadsheet than up close in person.

@Jorge Vazquez we stopped doing signs over 10 years ago.We had a separate phone number on our signs, so were able to track traffic & applications from them.We were getting more & BETTER leads from our online ads then the signs - so an easy choice to stop using them (also time & money savings).

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?

Much better than a legal filing or media attention. 

Before finalizing anything, I wanted to get a better understanding of how to evaluate different real estate opportunities and what challenges might be posed. 

Metering all utilities would make the property NOI better. 

Maybe you’ll sleep better at night.