Condo fee is high but includes water and heat, it is well managed, and already knew rent is high and easy to find renters, plus selling price was low so it made sense, so I jumped on it immediately. 

They had no electric or heat for over a year!

The tenant is 19, pregnant, appears to party a lot, and she claims she has no lease (she does) and seems to be clueless about utility bills (her lease says she is responsible for heat and electricity).

My hunch is that the townhouses would have lower maintenance costs because there is no interior common areas/hallways to heat or maintain.

Tenants are billed directly from the utility companies so this also applies to water and heat.4.

Despite having a newer roof, siding, windows, water heaters, and good heating systems, we were always fixing something.

Even then, $500 buys you a lot of pipe insulation and heat tape.

With wood you are looking for hardness and stability; the wider your plank the more movement you will have from heat/cool and humidity.

@Ryan AdamsAlso just to get ahead of this - Im aware the manager should have had the heat on at a reasonable level given the time of year but have no idea where the thermostat was set.

They are unsafe and it should be in th elease that no auxilery heating units are permited to be used in th eproprty.