As a landlord myself, I appreciate the surplus of investors coming in and improving the neighborhoods here with flipped homes that would otherwise continue being dilapidated properties. 

Any way you look at it, leaving that one unit as a one-bedroom is a total waste of space if there's a possibility of a cost efficient way to add another

If you spend all your time and energy into finding properties that you can sell for ridiculously low prices, you will not need to work on finding buyers/investors.

You can also fund improvements, like an FHA203k, but you don't have to live there & can do a lot of the work yourself.  

Also, if they are improving the efficiency of most appliances, would the future costs not be deferred by the future savings of such appliances?

I understand the desire to make all the profit and to have a big multiplier by improving the whole area.

Now whether it's just replacing the HWH with a boiler unit or replacing the whole thing with a combination system is still up for debate - I'm being told to do the combination because it will be more efficient since I'm paying the gas, but then again this could be someone trying to upsell me.

I think once we get into spring it will improve.

Rehab it and improve it's value.

Sustainability (because we're a nation that imports more than we export and shipping empty containers to China takes fuel) might be another reason, but by the time all the holes are cut in the steel frame and the container has been modified to live in, the embodied energy in that little container (even after taking shipping into account) is probably higher than FSC-certified stick frame construction.