If it is left out of the SOW, I assume it isn't considered in the "as completed" appraisal. given this the bank says that the house, when finished, will have non functional plumbing and electrical systems (because they were non-functional upon purchase) and thus isn't worth anymore than I paid for it.

When you combine this with the huge increases we are seeing in property tax assessments it adds up to a very large monthly bill.I understand the cities are not necessarily increasing their property tax rate, some of them are, but by continuing to increase the assessments at rates of 8-10% each year the cities are in effect growing their largest revenue stream exponentially.

The 1960s buildings have some functional obsolescence in my opinion..Where as the buildings Built in mid 90's around here have pretty much identical layouts to the new buildings so when I do upgrades the incoming tenants can't see much difference.)Hope this helps.Peter  

@David Faulkner  guilty as charged... bought 3.5 acres in Rohnert park in 1995.. it was unbuildable but it was right behind a HOme depot and had a freeway interchange within 500 yards.. just brought into the city limits and zone mixed use resi.and the Graton casino is right across the street largest Casino in N CA.. they paid for the improvments of the road brought sewer water etc.looks like we will be developing this piece in 17 to 18' ..

The largest discounts will be earned when you buy the ugliest properties.

Quality and consistency of cash flow (which is directly a function of the quality of neighborhood and tenant base) as well as equity position and capital reserves matter tremendously, more so than amount of positive cash flow IMO, in mitigating these situations.

If so it's really simple math, your profits are a function of your collected rent and expenses including your debt.  

Tara,If you use the search function and search for the name of the person/course your looking for you'll find a bunch of information about whatever you are looking for.

Killeen is actually the largest town between Austin and Dallas - larger than Waco, Temple, Round Rock, Georgetown, all of them.

Its kinda hard to describe but how things functionally work in regard to a house has always made sense to us.