If my purchase price is the same as the assessed land value, will I have any depreciable basis going into the project in the eyes of the IRS?

@Joe Pea if you are self employed, then the bank is relying on your taxes to verify income.

Once you understand this, you start to see why it is so much more important to understand the condition of the property.New investors spend a great deal of time and energy to worry about rents and if they are $50 more or less, but turn a completley black eye to the roof, that has only 5 years left and will take $10,000 to replace (not to mention all the other items).Generally sellers don't discount their dated properties enough to reflect the condition of major components.

If things look good in their eyes, it's time to make some offers.

It seems as it's going to be a bit tougher to scale when the average home price is almost double the next on the list.I'm completely aware that REI is very personal, but wanted to get a few fresh sets of eyes on the data to see if there are any other interpretations that I may be missing.

I'm frugal and have an eye for design.

I've been through bouts of bad PMs, and they certainly can neglect your property, but it's up to you to do your due diligence, find a PM you trust, keep an eye on them, and be willing to make a change if something isn't working.At the end of the day, the headaches of dealing with PMs are far less stressful than dealing with the headaches of tenants, imo.

My first realtor fired me, I made about 5 offers on homes that were too low in her eyes, but the offers were based off of numbers.

The thing about these type of properties is that there is sometimes a bit more than meets the eye.

We do the cleaning ourselves (3 hours one way) because I am paranoid about the place being kept nice and keeping my eyes on my investment as much as I can, plus it's fun