Books are great, but alone side with reading and listening, working on your business plans is really helping me a lot.Once you start putting together your ideas, forces you to stop and think about each component.

The availability and prices of building materials could be impacted for new development, but for existing real estate and long-term buy and hold rentals, I don't see a major impact.

Or take the other approach of putting significantly more than 20% down to force the cash-flow at that point in time, just keep in mind your ROI is going to drop significantly.

It still depends on the tenant being able to get into a new place quickly, but can eliminate the forced delay in the contract.

We have been divorced for 2 years now and per our divorce I need to refinance or be forced to sell.I’m wondering if anyone has any advice.

Cash out refi has no impact on your tax liability upon sale. 

The utilities and so forth that you paid reduce your rental income but aren't part of the basis of the property. ie, they don't impact the sale price profit of the property.You probably should find a CPA that can help you sort all this out as it seems like you may need to file some amended returns to cover the period since you bought the property.

I ended up receiving 50+ viewing requests and 15-20 filled applications for a single unit.If you are able to force appreciation/value addition, that might be a worthwhile project to undertake.

My approach is nearly always that the best path would be to sell your SFRs and 1031 into a larger MFR where you have lower per-unit purchase costs, efficiencies of scale, and the ability to force appreciation.I know Seattle is expensive, but I'm sure with some work you can find a property that will fit the bill.As far as where you're living now, stay there.

But it seems would be difficult to get enough value from forced appreciation just by bringing elements of the house up to date like kitchens and bathrooms, etc, rather than a full rehab on a significantly cheaper house.