Of course at age 23 with no wife and no kids, optimism abounds and it worked out. 

This tends to show what type of tenant would optimally go in your space, the rents expected, type of lease structure, TI's average, leasing commissions average, attorneys fees to do the lease, etc.

Optimally, I'd like to seek owner financing but I don't know how much equity the current owner has.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks as to how to optimize their function to reduce the bill, or even perhaps another suggestion entirely regarding HVAC?

Analyze and optimize your personal finances, and invest in less capital intensive vehicles (index funds, blue chip dividend stocks, bonds) to save up for a bigger down payment.

Sounds like he's interested in optimizing cash flow. 

One could also be remote, it is just not as optimal normally we can understand.

I mean, obviously the selling agent knew the arv and they probably figured 40 k of rehab to bring it to optimal market price so they listed it for 170k. 

For example, if you are going to focus on Google Adwords, you have ads and are continually running optimization tests, you have all keywords setup (including negative keywords!) 

I too love South Florida but beware of optimism based on past figures.