Old, professionally staged MLS pics from when he bought it.I had zero idea what the house actually looked like… until I drove from DFW to Seguin, changed the locks, and installed a lockbox.I thought I pulled up to the wrong house.I almost walked away.

I am discovering Bigger Pockets and hearing a lot about BRRR and pulling out your cash in a refi.  

Sometimes it means going with a temporary solution or putting off something for the future. 

As one of the posters here mentioned- most people who are successfully cash flowing LTRs bought them ten years ago, so the solution is to find something that is close to what you want, in a growing and desirable area and take action.

If you are not dealing with these code shifts yet, they are coming.This is my way of saying new construction is not a viable solution for most.

Please kindly do not point out that I need to "buy another home to move into" as a reason this won't "work", I have a solution for this that I'm not going into detail on in this post.

What’s the solution? 

The double-entry of accepting texts then logging them elsewhere gets old fast.The solution I landed on handles this - you can forward texts into the system, or tenants can text a dedicated number that logs everything automatically.

The simplest solution is to partner with an experienced investor.

The fact that we're now seeing solutions offer more in the way of add-ons and upsells only further reinforces the reality that many hosts using even a small degree of these additional capabilities could easily be paying $100/listing/mo for their services.