I am also taking this time to improve the value and increase equity in my own house.

Bringing something to the table will massively improve your chances at the eventual mentor relationship you seek.

What other benefits result from the improvement. 

So just use any opportunity to practice real estate6.

Some contradiction in thinking here too, you need to make improvements to bring the house you're looking at up to the standards of comps being similar.

Commercial tenants are different as they can account for leasehold improvements, expense and depreciate the items, but not a resident, residents cannot account for maintenance on taxes and the owner has that responsibility.Maintenance of a residence is therefore an owner's responsibility in every state of this country! 

So, basically I wanted to start practicing analyzing deals.

For these dry climates, there are so few heating days that the high cost of heating is not economically significant.Electric resistance heating may also make sense for a home addition if it is not practical to extend the existing heating system to supply heat to the new addition."

For practical purposes, the bank wouldn't really care whether you gave yourself a W2 or kept the money in the LLC.

The engineering company recommended "subsurface soils be improved to minimize further subsidence damage.