A double will cost more to fix (more kitchens and baths) than a single.An RE investment is all about the numbers.

Some paint or an entire kitchen?

The water company will not go inside the house to check these things - all they do is watch the reading on the water meter.If I could get access to the house,  I would go around the house and make sure all the faucets are turned off - kitchen sink, bathroom sink, tub/shower, laundry sink (if it has one), refrigerator icemaker connection, outdoor garden hose connections, drain valve on water heater, etc. 

Now, here in Cleveland, it seems that when I see a multiple I have to renovate more than one kitchen, different bathrooms, etc.

There are underground outlets throughout the home, no GFCI in the kitchens or bathrooms, one horizontal crack from floor to ceiling in the first floor with a crack running the width of the room where the wall meets the ceiling, there is a thin stair step crack on the brick exterior (seller claims the issue was repaired).

@Andrew Kerr -- At what point do you typically measure for and order kitchen cabinets and countertops?  

If you like what you hear, try them out.Moving on... we bought the 678sqft home with scratched up hardwood floors, an old kitchen and bathroom, old rugs in the basement, and a green second bathroom in the basement (yes, its green).This was a great home for just my wife and I.

We said you didn't need it, so there's a good thing there's no payment for it.But, should something come up, be it an investment opportunity, or an emergency beyond how liquid you normally stay, your kitchen just got destroyed but the insurance claim is going to take 2-3 months and your kids are hungry tonight, tenant destroyed the place and you want to turn it over as fast as possible, etc, you can click your mouse 3 times and dump $100k into your checking account, or $20k, or whatever, and only pay interest on the amount you use.Another good use-case for a HELOC is when/if you're about to disqualify yourself from getting a normal 1st position Fannie type loan.In almost all cases where someone is sitting on a bunch of equity, they should at least have a HELOC.

Then we went to turn on the water, and the lines had broken under the slab, with he design of the home to only way to fix this was to jackhammer up the slab, which before we were done resulted in a gutted kitchen and bathroom with 4 yards of new concrete needed.

We offered to make repairs and replace the vinyl flooring in the kitchen, bath and hallway (which the dogs had scratched through to the subfloor).