No, see above.    3.

Best answered with a quick story: I recently bought a quad in an area that makes many local investors wrinkle their noses.

@Abel RodriguesThose are commercial grade stair nosings and those would work.  

With Illinois in a total nose dive and many people wanting to flee to other states, is this a good or bad thing for wholesaling?

If someone else is holding it, and shows you where to touch it (hint - not on the nose) it's not scary and certainly not slimey.If you are going to do deals, you will need to get past your shyness or reluctance to speak to people.

The gorilla in the room here is the notion of selling my apartment and unlocking a good chunk of capital to play with without worrying about lender's turning their nose up at my DTI.

On top of that, I can only imagine how much more difficult being a contractor is in Massachusetts, where Big Brother wants you to pull a permit to blow your nose and have an inspector check the Kleenex afterward.

Now that it's a me instead of an us, I'm more interested in buy/hold than moving properties, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at clearing even $5k if someone walked in and made the right offer.

As hard nosed as this may seem, we are not our tenants friend, mother, father, brother, sister, bank or care giver.

It looks like a saw fish nose ;)