Perhaps offer an incentive for her to provide you pictures or allow for a video conference to capture a quick walk thru.

Hi All,I am pretty new in the real estate industry and I have recently closed my first deal.I have noticed that I spent a lot of time during the deal evaluations between: - calculating the estimated rents- checking property taxes- neighborhood: vacancy rate, crime, eviction rate, etc- average property management fees- average repair costs- mortgage rates- condition of the property/repairs needed for rent readiness- etcI have a spreadsheet where I capture all the above in order to calculate the potential ROI (leveraged and not) but doing this for a lot of properties is pretty time consuming.Most of the information above can also be easily found online by various means and this information could potentially be ingested by online services.Does anyone know an online tool that would calculate estimated property ROIs with up to date/real information and potentially offer a property search based on ROI?

Sure, no work for you, but if you are a working investor, your job is to capture that $25K equity by using your knowledge and work.

In the same way that being a chef and owning a mcdonalds are not interchangeable simply because they both focus on selling food. 

I like the @Kyle J. approach.My employer does a 5% match so, duh, yeah I'm going to contribute my 5% and capture that.But the lion's share of my disposable income (and rental income) goes towards the next rental acquisition.And a portion of the cashflow from rentals goes into my personal IRA!

What your CPA has recommended is you receiving rent "income" in the form of a personal service barter, so you would still technically have to report the value of the chef services as rental income.Now it's true, most people don't report barter services, but in this case there is a vast difference between what the tax regulation states vs what people actually do.For example, as a CPA, if I do your tax return in return for mowing the lawn at my house, I would still have to value the amount of your lawnmowing and declare that as income. 

In the same way that being a chef and owning a Red lobster both make money from selling food, but are not considered the same job nor require the same skill sets. 

You'd need to have great service, a great location, and you'd have to capture a small group of people who are intentionally looking to stay in a conventional B&B over other options that may be cheaper or more convenient.

This costs about $75 per month, or, if I can get one of the tenants to allow me to set up my "Automation Hub" (I use Smartthings HUB in my setup), I will give the tenant $25 per month towards their bill.There are many ways that Smart Devices can help, not only in the case of smoke detectors.I have motion detectors which turn on and off lights, cameras that record to the Internet, leak detectors that tell me if there are problems with my basement, particularly if one of my equipment like a Hot Water Heater or Hot Water boiler is leaking, etc.In fact, I normally buy properties in transitioning neighborhoods, capturing the appreciation as the neighborhood gets better.The Internet Cameras became very important in this situation for 2 reasons:1) I kept getting sanitation tickets for dirty sidewalks.

My personal feeling is the current seller is capturing the appreciation.