I looked into digital locks and the cost is very high when you have two doors per apartment.Doorbells - with the old houses the wiring is old and frail.  

The popular sites are difficult to glean any accurate data from...the truth is that Redfin has the only actual broker presence and the others are really in place to get access to your information with "click bait"...I know our MLS cuts zillow off from syndicating listings about every other month...same with Realtor.com...lots of in-fighting.If you are big on mapping and want the best out there, look at esri/ arc gis...or even mapbox...and MS Power BI is probably the most easily accessible option.

If most homes sell quickly in your area and yours is not even showing, then look at comparison of their online presence versus yours to see if improvements can be made in pictures, description, etc.  

Something along the lines of "5% if we have to pay a cooperating agent, but we'll reduce that to 4% if we keep both sides of the deal" - But clearly, we're talking single digit savings here, which is normally not going to allow you to negotiate a huge discount just because you are unrepresented.)In many cases, the view of the listing agent/broker is If I'm dealing with an unrepresented buyer, that just means I have to do three times as much work to close this deal (because now I have to do my own work as the listing agent, in addition to all of the stuff the buyer's agent would normally do)...Many (especially high volume) listing agents don't like working with buyers, lenders, inspectors, and appraisers, and all the other plates the buyer's agent has to keep in the air, and would actually prefer to just pay the commission and have a strong buyer's agent keep everything on track. 

I usually advise my clients to do 506b unless they have great marketing chops or plan to spend a lot in hiring digital marketing experts.

Of course every market is different, however in general rents are weighted much more heavily by bedrooms than presence/lack of a basement

In your opinions, which brokerages have a strong presence/reputation in Austin?

Everyone has different obstacles so how to spend your time should be specific to what you need to overcome. highest ROI time investments would be education, active local and digital networking weekly (if not daily), learning to raise money, and content creation. write out a strategy, and then determine what is in your way from accomplishing that.

Columbus, Ohio is hands down the best market to invest in solely because of its presence on BiggerPockets

One resident was slightly late for a few months as they temporarily lost their auto repair job,  but were rehired and caught up.There are definitely some freeloaders/opportunists out there,  but they are a small minority  (low single digits percentage if not sub 1%) - no comfort if you happen to have one of them -  but odds are fairly low.