You will love maintaining that steady cash flow, as long as you select the right tenants (and avoid evictions / tenant issues).

In this case, what I see is a tenant doing what he/she needs to do (and doing what I still maintain the OP should have known they needed to do at the time) and actually making some effort to mitigate the landlord's damages.  

These contracts, from both sides of the river, have a history of standing up well in court.We want the legal documents that we use to not only stand up well in court if need be, but more importantly to provide a framework of clear understanding between ourselves and the tenants we serve.... an agreement that can actually be used effectively by all parties to create and maintain a successful tenancy.

The heater was off while we were away, but we have had the heater off for few days before while the windows were closed and the temp was maintained fairly well inside.

Use a material that's easy to clean/maintain, has a longer life span overall, looks great no matter how much traffic it receives, a material that is classic/timeless rather than run the risk of today's trendy material becoming dated as styles change.

If they don't have great credit , can't supply proper pay stubs, references, maintain my property as in snow shoveling, etc. 

Yet they allowed my 'occupying business' to deduct all the expenses incurred to run & maintain that office.

That said, your LLC must be treated as a business to remain effective, so it is another layer of work for you to maintain it but it's not daunting or cumbersome. 

I guess in the strictest terms I would have made far more money each year had I totally devoted all of my time to managing and maintaining the properties myself.

Sure 2006 was a down year, but so long as the US maintains most of the wealth / income in the world the real estate here will continue to rise.