The house is a 3 bed 4 bath but I’m adding 2 bedrooms and a theater room in the basement.

I also volunteer my time as a board member of the RPA (Rental Property Association of Wisconsin), a non-profit REIA and we focus on education, landlord-tenant law and lobbying on behalf of landlords in Madison.Networking is important especially in the beginning, because it gives you confidence to see other people's success when you are getting started.

I’ve been looking forward to these changes since they started working on them and even lobbied some of the council members.

Turning the pool table loft area into a full-on game room, or maybe even doing a projector screen with a home theater or video gaming set-up there - that could be a huge selling point for families looking to book a stay with amenities and spaces that will help keep their kids occupied and entertained.One note on the existing hot tub: having an awesome, well-running, clean hot tub can definitely help you command a nice premium on your STR bookings. 

The attractions in Detroit (casinos, stadiums, Fox Theater, Bell Isle, etc) pull the middle class from the suburbs for a few hours, but they go back to suburbia afterwards because they will never live/raise a family near downtown.

Anything that is almost guaranteed to be used daily in your rentals (i.e. couches, bed, chairs), I'd try to invest in as much quality as you can for those specific items.Some store sites will let you filter for "contract grade" or "commercial grade" items - these are the sorts of furnishing that get put into higher-use commercial applications such as hotel lobbies, apartment building amenity spaces, etc. 

Now the landlord has to eat the cost of the attorney, it took a month or two longer, probably will raise rents, screen harder and ultimately the vast majority of good tenants get to pay the price.That's why I donate my time to the RPA Rental Property Association of Wisconsin, which is a local non-profit REIA and we lobby in Madison for sustainable landlord tenant laws - if you are a Wisconsin investor, please consider joining.

I actually have this unit in my home theater right now.

During this 70% of the time, they individually took participants out to the lobby to have one on one talks about their personal situation and reasons for being there and also to push their $35k Diamond Level annual membership.

I personally, being on the NAR Board, at multiples levels of the organization, and being heavily involved on the lobbying/legal side have been way ahead of the curve on this stuff.