That way it is all broken out in the review.

So, if I did an electrical upgrade that was inspected by the town, and my house burns down for faulty wiring (that was inspected), the town carries no liability. 

There is a high likelihood that they will find out at some point and all trust will be broken.

When I purchase a new rental, I always change out the valves for the toilets and faucets with upgraded valves that are less likely to fail.

My estimated basis, stepped up, is about 459K (that is 1/2 of my basis of 273.5K + 20K improvements and 1/2 the value at time of my husband's death of 585K) + 20K upgrades this year to sell.

At the moments, I'm looking at 2 properties both in California:-  First one is a beautiful, bigger home, completely high-end upgraded, in a higher value area with a good school district, and of course it comes with a higher cost to buy, rent can only cover the monthly expenses (mortgage, insurance, tax, etc), this one is expected to have higher appreciations in the long term.- Second one is a decent remodeled home, smaller, in a lower value area, I can get it without financing (pay cash), so it will cash flow (about $2200/moth after all expenses such as tax and insurance), it also has a potential for an ADU, but future appreciation is not as great as the first property due to location.

(Minor upgrades I could handle) I don't know any contractors at the moment.

Some of the main variables in my projection models include: expenses (broken down into various categories like personal expenses, capex, debt service, vacancy, etc.), income, cashflow, debt, DTI, equity, property appreciation, rent appreciation, mortgage paydown & amortization, rate of net worth growth, cost of living increases, hours worked per week, cash on hand, etc, etc. 

I work with mobile home dealerships and many of their customers end upgrading to new homes while selling their used homes.

Their slide deck, 85 pages is on their website, They believe that they will increase the properties NOI by 45% over 5 yr hold, mostly through rent increases after doing 5K interior upgrades in all 252 units, thus adding 19 million to value of property.