The bread-and-butter 2-6 unit multifamilies are still NOT appealing to the people you're envisioning in the areas you mentioned.The Elm to Maple corridor tends to brighten up a bit as you move north from Bridge Street--say, from Prospect Street north.If you live in the building you have a degree of control over who you're renting to, so that can insulate you from some problems you might encounter as an absentee landlord.  

Google is the 800 lbs gorilla that controls your websites lead gen destiny.  

There are automatic timers/controllers that have the fan run every 15 minutes.

This should be required reading for all high school students, imo.Total Money Makeover (Dave Ramsey) - how to get your finances under control, if they aren't alreadyAll Your Worth & Two-Income Trap (Elizabeth Warren) - the intersections of personal finance and government policy - good things to understand if you're a tax-paying US citizen.Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Roberts, Joseph R.

@Carlos Cevallos  In the upstate in SC, where I am focused, tenants pay electricity directly and water, sewer, trash, and pest control can be billed back to tenants either through a RUBS system or a flat-fee bill, which a lot of landlords are moving to because it's easy for the tenants to understand and you don't have to wait for the RUBS service to calculate the payments or pay their fees.We found that billing through RUBS, especially for water, has the positive effect not only of raising your NOI, but also it encourages tenants to be more economical with water in the first place, now that they have to pay for it.

This is going to be the easiest way for him to be out from under the treachers of landlording, and this would be the easiest way for you to essentially assume his loan, and have control of the house. 

It's hard to give up control to management after working so hard!

gluing hardwoods down is the best option and controls noise, movement, water penetration far better then nail and floating options. the trade off is it takes 3x longer to install. so it really just matters what you goal is and what your willing to do or spend to get there.

This gives them full control of the loan parameters.

My issue with the latter is that the heat is controlled by the upstairs unit, so that doesn't seem fair to the lower tenant.