I've found it invaluable to have someone to talk to when I hit a stumbling block. 

Had to get rid of some contractors early on in the process, and ultimately should have focused on speed & efficiency over trying to hit my budget.

When Covid hit here in Atl and the whole city shut down, I was able to get out of all of my leases very easily.

The tenant with the thermostat must be told - in writing - that the temperature should stay within a certain range to ensure the second tenant gets the appropriate amount of heat.You can also look into installing a "smart thermostat" like Ecobee and setting limits to the hit so tenants can't put it above/below certain threshholds.

However, that is time prohibitive, since the property is about to hit the market soon, so we must deal with working this out with the resulting purchased properties.

You can do that, but I can't hit that number for you.I'd say go drive the properties if you can to save us time....if you don't like the neighborhood or the house or something about it, saves me an hour of time.If you are marketing for deals, give us those of interest you don't want.

In my limited experience with them, they can be hit or miss.

Plus if you legalize and turn the property into a 3-unit, you will get hit with higher property taxes. 

It's one of the first questions I ask prospective tenants when they contact me and it's a deal breaker. 9 times out of 10, when winter in Wisconsin hits, the "outside only" smokers end up back in the house or in the garage.I do have a property with inherited tenants of 25 years who smoke and I'm not looking forward to that vacancy.

I’m currently trying to find as many podcasts, books, articles, people, etc to learn as much as possible so as soon as I start getting paychecks I can hit the ground running.