There werent any drops into the apartment but simply ceiling saturation.

However, with mortgage rates where they are, it might be worth waiting for them to drop a bit to refinance and pull out equity at a better rate.For your second question, improving your current property to maximize its value before a refinance or HELOC is a smart move.

With interest rates as they are, and knowing they are probably going to start dropping over the next few quarters, is it best to wait on any kind of finance for a year'ish or are the rates not going to come down enough over that period to make a huge difference?

We appealed and got no change- still 19k below.We discussed a 10k variance in the potential appraisal when I was in the office and I appreciate that REI stuck to their word and dropped their price to get to 10k above appraisal.

so i'm left with... the biggest drivers seem to be... 1. the rise in interest rates, and 2. the building drop that was caused by the great recession. 

This business and the investment knowledge probably won't drop in your lap at KW or even any other brokerage. 

We have two options, they can pay on our software through their app or they can drop payment to our office durring office hours.

You can also provide multiple invoices to show no dramatic drops in usage, which would indicate the heat was still on.If the landlord doesn't have a bill, that may indicate the utility was off.

After paying closing costs, title fees, appraisal, origination, underwriting, processing, legal and other fees, the typical refinance costs about 1.75 - 2.5% of the loan amount just in closing costs (obviously before people yell at me, this varies drastically by state, but having done loans all over the country I find this to be a pretty accurate estimate).  2) Keeping the average 2% cost in mind and the fact that people typically refinance when rates drop about .75% - 1% or more, I wanted to see if paying an extra point now when I was already paying all the closing costs to buy the rate down made sense. 1 point can get you between .5% - .625% off the rate depending on the days pricing and the coupon you are pricing. 

Contrast that to the bond market--the source of movement for all manner of interest rates--which frequently moves more than 8 times in any given second.In other words, the financial market is able to make its move well in advance of the Fed and that's a substantial part of the explanation for the drop in mortgage rates seen over the past year.