If you leave the windows bare you'll be cheapening the look on an upper priced unit or opening yourself up to the tenant hanging cheap (paint drop-cloth quality) blinds using the same nails he would use to hang Christmas lights outside, 20 penny nails!

heck, for the flips I have done, they barely have the 3.5% down payment for fha. no wonder they always want a big juicy closing cost credit. :)

(I get asked that a lot, and when down in so cal there was no rhyme or reason to pricing, and land was so hard to find) you can use formulas when the product is under certain values but when the homes go way up in value that all changes.especially in CA.. were you may pay 2 mil for a bare lot in Palo alto spend 600k building a nice 2500 sq ft home and selling it for 4 million ... % does not work.in our production stuff like we do in Oregon  were the end product is now in the 450 to 500k range  1/4 to 1/5 is what you need for land cost to keep your margin at 15% of gross or there abouts.. but many builders are only making 5 to 10% of gross if that , depending on where they get their construction money.our Gresham project Lennar offered me 130k per finished lot  and we are selling houses right at 450k.. so they were paying top dollar but they build 400 plus houses a year in this market so their margins are much tighter and they are not carrying ANY dirt or land.. they only buy when they can go vertical GENERALLY speaking as I say this they have just gone into contract of a few parcels next to one I am in process of developing 160 lots on.. but basically that's how it works.

I'm 21, and I'm just barely starting to build credit.

I'm a newbie and barely getting into all this.

You can barely buy and move six homes for that.

Nothing worse than having a bunch of drunk people you barely know destroy your house.Other than that, I would suggest trying to tap your existing resources, namely your dad for more information. 

This woman can barely pay her rent so I will most likley never see that money again and the water is not separated in the building. 

Or else is it just the crazy SF Bay Area market with overvalued properties that naturally sell higher than the rental market can bare?

I am possibly moving to the Kelso/Longview area in near future and am in need of a real estate agent that understands real estate investing (because I barely do).