You have to do your interior renovations as tenants move, or leases expire and you give the tenant notice your not going to renew their lease.In really bad properties, you may need to kick out a building at time, which can be done with notice as long as your doing it for health and safety reasons, or the entire property. 

I notice that IRR is really manipulated but sliding cashflow up earlier than what will really happen so I don't look at that. 

Ahh ok, I was under the impression that I needed to file it separately and give myself a K1 even for single member LLC's.I looked it up and noticed that personal rental income & losses get filed under schedule E while LLC income & losses get filed under schedule C. 

On day one I noticed the landing for the stairs didn’t have enough headroom clearance for code.

I actually messed both of these things up a bit and got very lucky with the amount of concessions for repairs I was able to get and the availability of a good crew with only a few days notice.

Other places rent increased significantly like they did in my market (DC), with a ton of homeowners moving over to becoming renters, and their previous homes being in tied up in foreclosure for years, decreasing the available amount of housing.The market crash was what made me go all in on real estate.

What pitfalls do you notice 1st time real estate investors getting into?

You should be serving the tenant with two notices.

So I received a violation notice from the city of Royal Oak, Mi for not having my rental registered (shame on me) and as a part of remediating, I need to have an inspection.

Or do you just put a notice to pay or quit on the 4th 5th or 10th and give couple days and not say anything and just slap notice to quit on door.