Contractors will RARELY walk the house until you own it unless Its a personal relationship or if you have them on retainer for you team.

As part of our mission to serve you, we provide a home loan guaranty benefit and other housing-related programs to help you buy, build, repair, retain, or adapt a home for your own personal occupancy."

Then they got rid of the contractors (they didn't have to pay the unemployment taxes to the state when they got rid of us), and finally, they had to cut into their own muscle when things got really bad.

By they I mean the property management company (who I don’t intend to retain) would transfer the money to me.Is this normal?

Go at different times of the day/week and make sure there are no rowdy neighbors or dogs that could affect you retaining/getting tenants.

Has to be a way to retain another 3-5% roi that I am missing 

IF you are not experienced with this, you may be better off retaining an architect on an hourly basis to help narrow and document the current conditions and proposed changes.  

Or if commercial is overbuilt and Amazon is flexing it's muscle then sell commercial and buy residential. 

Based on our research we believe that the 8 homes we walked through range in market value between $175,000 and $260,000 and would retain or increase value.

I don't know anything about that course, but even if the information is good, how much do you hope to retain after a 3 day course?