If you're just talking about painting a few rooms here and there, a roller and 2" cut in brush will take care of 95% of anything you'll come across.

STR buyers and sellers do seamless soft hand-offs of their bookings by working directly with each other throughout the sale process.

Most lenders shy away from funding land prep and infrastructure—soft costs like grading, roads, and utilities—because they’re hard to collateralize and carry a lot of risk without vertical improvements in place.In a similar deal, I partnered with another investor here on BiggerPockets to finance a similar project which also had an end buyer in hand, but the cost of capital was high as it was north of 25% annually to the borrower.

He told me that I was "soft" pre-approved for the amount that we tried for (200k) but needed a 20% down payment or 40k in the bank at the time of purchase.

Had another person state the mattress was so soft they slept on the floor.

But he brushed it off and kept looking.

Generally, my PM there has mentioned the rental market is fairly soft and difficult to maneuver within, at the moment.

I agree that a peel and stick wall paper, mural, or even a soft tapestry like art that can be secured at the bottom and top might help.

Given it's a condo, I would make sure you can rent it out And brush up on landlord tenant laws in Illinois.

For us, that usually took 12 to 18 months before I was confident we could replicate the model elsewhere without losing momentum in the original market.Here’s how I looked at it:First 6 months were all about testing marketing, lead flow, and building buyer relationships.Months 6–12 were about refining those processes, hiring or training an acquisitions rep, and starting to step back from the daily grind.Once it becomes easy going from lead to acquisition to exit I’d start laying the groundwork for the next market: choosing a title partner, testing ads, building a soft buyer list.By month 12–18, I could usually make the shift without losing focus on the original market.I also waited until I had a dispo manager and lead intake fully delegated, so I wasn’t bouncing between markets.