Personally I consider it to be more of a entry level neighborhood for first time home buyers and a blue collar neighborhood for long term renters.

In fact, some lenders add back repairs that are "one time" repairs.

However, they spend a ridiculous amount of time for 1-2 deals a year.

There comes a point where having a real estate-savvy tax preparer outweighs your time learning a new software. 

Friends wanted to rent it and so we did and they always paid on time.

You said you've owned the property for 8 years; that's like 2017 which was a prime time to buy.

Unfortunately this market doesn’t appreciate that quickly, but I possibly may do that in 2-3 years depending on the market, debt pay down and the interest rates at that time. 

Sorry to say but it's time to lawyer up.  

It is maybe a couple thousand dollar up-front cost for the developers to determine the viability of a project.I work with experienced developers, who could perform & gather all this data on their own if they really wanted to, but the value that an engineer brings on these is typically worth their time & small cost. 

There was literally a tv news story featuring a young lady that said she understood why they were closing because she saw theft every time she was there.