The fact that you are looking to stay and are willing to buy down your rate is a smart move consider you don't plan to refi and want to take advantage of the current low market.

OR do I have to wait until the properties titles are officially in our names 2020 and then starting 2020 taxes I can start taking advantage of tax write offs.

How do we use her being a realtor to our advantage.

One of the advantages is that you will have access to MLS (also a monthly recurring expense). 

Sometimes, that could boost your cashflow a little bit more by targeting another market with different advantages. 

I don’t know why there would be any advantage of bidding early unless it will stop the auction.

There are a lot of advantages to building an ADU right now and I want to get started.

There are the tax advantages of holding the property which is currently in an LLC, but I'd imagine I'd use some if not all of the proceeds to get back into another property of some sort to reap that shelter. 

Aiming for projects with faster turnaround gives us an option to REFINANCE if we decide to hold the property long term and take advantage of the low interest environment.

I purchased a partial in late 2019 in the notes space as my first step into the note industry, from an investor perspective you have a lot of advantages over owning the physical property when it comes to maintenance costs; and there are a lot of other benefits to being the bank as well when it comes to handling the financial side of mortgages.