It's full of dings, dents, scratches (I live in South Philly, nothing but street parking), missing a hub cap, and its in "crap gold" color.

They have some really wonderful colors/styles, tile has came a loooooong way and is really great now!   

The old stuff looks clean and not dreadful, and is in neutral colors, but isn't that nice (e.g. the cabinets are kind of rickety and the DW/fridge don't really fit all that well into the space made for them, the floors aren't missing pieces, but also are a bit uneven in places).  

I would make sure the units have modern appliances including dishwashers and modern color schemes.

That is called OSB ( oriented strand board) and is mostly used for sheathing on the outside of the house under the siding. the problem with putting Spackle over it to try and hide it is that the moisture from the Spackle may get into the board and start to de-laminate it. if it is only 3'-4' high, you can dress it up with some sheets of 1/4" bead board, if it's the total wall you can cover it with 1/4" drywall. look at it this way, there is no way a tenant will put a hole through those walls after you cover it, i would consider having that a plus.

It could turn out good or bad.Of course we have a colorful President who is the wild card in all this.

I had a applicant like that who started demanding repainting the kitchen because they didn’t like the color, demanded I lower my security deposit as they felt it was unnecessarily high and wanted a bit lower rent because it was off season. 

I've been using these, they're relatively cheap, good quality and dress up even mediocre cabinetry well.cabinet pulls

Maybe true, maybe not.I took it 100% online and as far as I know passed with flying colors.

All you want is to repair any sections you need to (you'll probably find some after you sand), sand it down just enough to remove obvious signs of wear, putty up and color the gaps, and seal in place with a thinned sealer coat of oil-based polyurethane and three more coats.