In my market, I only have one vendor qualified for appliance warranty work, and the warranty companies paid him half his standard fee for each service call. 

With that kind of equity you would be to find a newer, nicely performing Quad in a market that is appreciating. 

I only charge $500.

My mother-in-law wants to help my husband and I on our first real estate investment purchase. 

In essence they are a PM and asset manager, with the goal of ensuring your asset is optimally performing.

For any value add project, the primary evaluation is based on the numbers.Provided you have trustworthy teammates for the renovation side and a competent agent on the valuation side, you'll perform no matter the location.It seems your weighing factors that relate more towards long-term investing and where your asset will appreciate the most.In respect to emerging markets, you'll want to use characteristics like population growth, employment growth, safety trends and path of progress.

Getting a well performing quad would be great to season for 4 years. 

Owners mistakenly ASSUME all PMCs offer the exact SAME SERVICES and PERFORM those services EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, so price is the only differentiator – so, they often select the first PMC they call or that calls them back!

Come to think of it, though, I can't imagine why they wouldn't let me perform one just to understand how much I can offer.  

Visual inspection is an inspector going into a unit and performing a walk-through inspection visually inspecting the condition of the paint.