- townhomes and SFHs. multi's come at a premium and the financing can get wonky even if it is your primary. ( read this post I recently wrote that goes dives deeper into the details)- Should I put closer to 20% down or leverage more with 10-15% down?

No impossible at all, but I find that a lot of investors I work with locally tend to run into issues on this when we dive deeper. #3 Personally, when I was starting out, I invested out of state.

most of the BP articles i read simply state that if you spend >750 hours in real estate per year you can use this awesome tax loophole, but as i dive deeper this designation seems incredibly complicated and almost guaranteed to invite an audit the way i want to use it, which is to designate my non-working spouse (who spent at least 750 hours on this stuff last year), with whom i file jointly, as our "real estate professional."

Dig deeper with local contacts in those markets.

You may need to pay for a deeper look. 

For my current remodel I'm thinking of getting an American Standard acrylic tub that is deeper, looks nice and is better for soaking in (the Kohler is too low to soak in.).

Something I’ll have to dig a little deeper into.

If you have a mortgage, you can't tell the lender that your tenant hasn't paid because of the reasons outlined.You need to start the eviction process sooner rather than later and stop digging yourself deeper into financial loss.

As part of my risk avoidance/Exit strategy analysis, I was taking into account the possibility of a market correction or a deeper financial trouble around the 18 or 24 month mark.

Making 3k on a deal is not the time to scale up, it's the time to dig deeper and figure out why you didn't make 10k and where you can adjust to make 10k next time.