Not to mention, are you actually all approved for a 30 year mortgage on rental property/non owner occupied?

Anyways if nothing works out for me here at least I know that this type of help exist for homeowners needing help and I can learn more about it.

That depreciation is a non-cash expense that does save on taxes.

I feel that since I've been in the business for so long, I assume most non investors are familiar with the terminology. 

I am not familiar with the zoning boards, but have heard they can be very political despite an investors best intentions for the property and neighborhood.Illegal duplexes exist all over the city, and I’ve heard that continuing to use it as such is less of a risk due to the lack of enforcement by the city.

Low risk involves things like replacing doors, drawers, or even covering leaded surfaces (ie. putting new sheetrock over existing lead painted walls). 

Even if it was 25% of a down payment, the idea being that that money will go further for you when you roll it our rather than put it back into the existing property. 

No sale/escape clause was in the existing leases so we figured we'd tread water for the 6 months until we could turnover and bring better tenants in. 1 tenant has been late every month  on rent so far.

They are interesting it determining the applicant's ability to repay so they would be unlikely to include non-applicant income (even though it's your spouse). 

My hope is that because with the BRRRR method, getting a conventional loan on a non-owner occupied property just has different criteria, but since this would be for an owner occupied property, I won't need that seasoning period and could refi with a VA loan as soon as the reno is done.