@Michael Plaks - S Corp will involve unnecessary complexity - accounting for extra entity, dealing with payroll, and it won't solve the problem fully - part of the profits must be distributed as salary with all social security taxes and only part can be distributed as dividends.

All complicated problems need to be evaluated from a number of points of view to triangulate what is best.  

If I had it to do over I wouldn't have done it due to property management costs and complications I've ran into (and lack of appreciation as you've mentioned).

With tricky and complicated regulations in Fannie/Freddie lending with COVID-19.

Right now it's just an idea for me but it seems like it's just a little bit of extra language in a regular lease, maybe it's more complicated than it seems? 

If you take a duplex that will be worth $150k once it is renovated, if you bought it for $100k and put $20,000 into it to fix it up, your cash out at refinancing time would (typically)  be 75% ($112,500)... so you would get back out of it all your initial money, less $8,000 of what you spent renovating it... but this plan requires $120,000 in cash to pull off... so you can see that BRRRRs can be complicated on limited funds.  

What are some ideas on navigating this zoning complication.

There's no tax due in this process, but there're legal, lending, and insurance complications that need to be taken care of.- Partnership is risky.

If the chip happened somewhere else, perhaps in an edge treatment more complicated than a simple eased edge, that just reveals more of the unpredictability of granite in rentals.

If you elect S Corp tax status that just costs more, more complicated, and even less efficient if not “negative efficiency.”I don’t see how how this will work.