The AP has to be open, notorious and hostile...those terms have a legal meaning and essentially it is that you as the owner have been fully deprived of your right to the property.Absent those items above, it sounds like at best they have another legal right which is a "prescriptive easement".

- FYI: it's only illegal to try to rent it out, the property owner can usually legally live in a nonconforming basement unit.If you do all this you may still negatively cashflow each month, so make sure your income can cover and/or your cash reserves.If you do this successfully, you will learn more in 1-2 years than you would reading here on BP for 5+ years:)Good luck:)

A colleague of mine has bought two properties owner-occupied back to back in Arlington (with a 5% rate and a 7% rate) doing basement conversions and renting rooms, lowering his effective monthly payment on each property to sub 2K each time.

Asa result, we are seeking alternative methods for acquiring off-marketproperties.While we havedeveloped a robust system for identifying and pre-qualifying potential landparcels, one of the major hurdles we face is reaching the property owners.

You can't add a lake but you can build out a great kitchen with everything needed to cook anything.Every STR owner will have a different answer.

However, if you're a W2 high income earner or business owner, I can't imagine it makes any sense to flip houses, mail mass post cards, wholesale, or build lead gen websites with the value of your time being better spent other places (such as learning about real estate and increasing your income through proven means), such as at your 9-5pm or growing your business, and your real estate is a long term process and you don't need "home run" deals to qualify or make it work.

What nice though with that is you build equity quicker.So just adding my experiences with the commercial side, from an owners point of view.Good luck!

Know this: the #1 reason why landlords fail - failure to manage to the lease (source:  American Apartment Owners' Assn). 

You just have to know the area  the soils and or get owners permission to do a test if they will allow it ( pretty rare i suspect to be able to do that)..

Almost every single successful business owner found a strong competitive advantage and used it to focus on one thing to be the best at it.