Soil & sidewalk pitched toward building.

i'd love a storefront in an up and coming area. when the downtown is cute/cozy, allows for tables on the sidewalks, and young people are present, those can be cash cows! 

There is a difference between having to park on the (not busy) street in front of your house, and having to park several houses down in an empty lot, or having to park on the sidewalk and risk getting a ticket.If the street isn't a busy one, you do want to take into account that 4 units could mean as many as 8 cars (not likely, but possible).

I was encouraged by the amount of infrastructure investment that I saw (new medians, sidewalk updates, resident interviews) and the overall impression I got from TPD reps was that crime was holding steady or creeping downward.I am currently concentrating on small multifamily properties that have some kind of manageable upside.

The metal detectors will pick up any metal like rebar in sidewalks/driveways, iron sewer lines, etc. so gives more false positives that can be hard to discern resulting in a report that identifies "areas of concern" with no real conclusion. 

There is a sidewalk and some mud.That driveway gate?

Google "sidewalk scraper" (equivalent to what @Don Meinke calls a flat floor scraper) - use the length of the handle to your advantage to pop the underlayment free.  

I keep driving and see what looked like an out of place invester shoveling the sidewalk and asked him if he had any houses to sell.

Same applies if you are building 5 or more units or if your neighbor is  building at the same time.If you develop in Seattle, make sure you know how SIP (site improvement plans like sidewalks, alleys, etc) works.With a market crash coming soon, I'd be careful with development.

Sidewalk cracked up so I would like to re-do the drive way. 3k for driveway?