I have also found good brands of faucets on Amazon that are less expensive.

You actually get paid for it via the lack of expense so its more capital gain "profit." 

So I begin graduate school this May and rent near my school is pretty expensive.

This is important to me since construction is super expensive here in CA, and I have a bunch of other 1031 properties I could sell to convert into the newly constructed property to reduce the loan burden after.  

Some pre-payment penalties are as long as 5 years which a likely dropping interest rate environment over the next year or two can be very expensive when you cannot refi because the PPP is to much. 

However, the prices I've gotten for painting are so expensive!

This seems crazy expensive to me. 

The ADU regulations don't help, as it's too expensive to build The political policies in CA and elsewhere do have a direct impact on housing, affecting prices, landlords ability to remove tenants, etc. 

Right now, I find myself bouncing between analyzing short-term rentals, then long-term rentals, and then creating financial projections, only to come face-to-face with reality (how accurate are my projections, and are my expenses underestimated or overestimated?).

Ideally, they should have ordered the questionnaire in the very beginning, or asked you general questions about the complex before asking you to pay for the appraisal, since the questionnaire is less expensive.