I am great at running my business but admittedly weak in the real estate department but I am working on changing that!

In the City of Atlanta it would usually be the Atlanta Police Department. 

Call the local building department and ask them how to check on your contractor. 

I agree, the water department, and waste management are the best resource for the most accurate information.

I struggle in the lead generation department. 

@Loren Perez  I would also recommend looking for smaller, local banks and ask for the commercial lending department. 

I screened as well as I could, they all looked good on paper, seemed nice in person, references and background checks checked out etc. but turnover was higher, living there was less fun, and a few house mates turned out to be nightmares: one started working as a paralegal and spent her days researching ways to screw me over on everything, another one started secretly growing peyote in his closet and ended up trying to stab another housemate who drank a bit too much one night and got emotional when I was out of town (they both spent some time in county jail over that incident and had to be asked nicely to GTFO) another one lived almost entirely off of expired frozen cod that he bought on sale for $1 and then microwaved it, making the house smell like nasty rotten fish for a few hours every night... barking dogs left unattended in the yard, dog fights, angry neighbors, dog poop, the peyote cult coming by and hosting drum circles into the night having bon fires in the yard, police coming by, fire department coming by... ...my future wife moved in and then we moved out pretty soon after, bought a different primary with no room mates, kicked all the crazies out and made it a normal rental rented to a family.

Hi @Cameron Foster,First thing I would do is to search for the property in your local municipality's building department to find any history of permits pulled for permission to build that addition.

Call the local water department and get last year's bills.Property Taxes, if you're actually adding ~$100k of value, you should expect these to go up upon reassessment.What about lawn care and snow removal?

Give the codes department a call and get up to speed on if they exist and what they are before you do anything else!