1- It's important to have a good relationship and communication with your contractor.2- While it may take more time up front, planning as much out in advance as possible in terms of design would have saved several headaches.

Take 3 or 6 months to see what you turn up in terms of networking contacts.

But as you can see in term #2, they want me to agree to take on that entire risk myself because they won't go lower or fix anything.For #3, my lender said that they can't agree to put repair costs in escrow because they haven't done their appraisal and inspection, so they can't agree to that.

This is just my very opinionated $0.02 based on the real estate purchase transactions that cross my desk, I offer no opinion on the value of solar panels in terms of saving the world or any of that.Owned free/clear: No impact, typically zero value add.

In terms of rentals for us landlords, I could see this opening up some opportunities for current landlords to add an additional unit or two to a rental property, and also to turn a property that wouldn't generate enough cashflow with the single unit currently on-site, to producing a positive cashflow with the addition of 1-2 more units.

And @Heather Hall in terms of best areas of town for year round traffic, Downtown, Old Colorado City, and Manitou are going to be your best bets. 

In terms of a rental property, I would suggest you're better off looking for OOS opportunities. 

The bigger custom projects I do are what I enjoy the most and in terms of retail, are bigger ticket items. 

So scale is less relevant to me in terms of units I focus more on cash flow rather than how many doors I have in total.

You expense percentages seem to be in the right ballpark, and while I would like to see a higher cash flow (I try to shoot for $150 per unit/month), you are certainly there in terms of Cash on Cash Return.