If you have a tax return prepared during your retirement period - look at the bottom of the first page for the number called AGI, Adjusted Gross Income.2.

Having a HELOC that adjusts every five years is great though especially in the raising rate environment that we're in now.

I would suggest hiring someone who is non-biased; estimators are contracted by large firms, including GC's, all the time. hire a private claims adjuster.

Look at comps that you can find their land value (vacant lots of the same size close by are great to figure land value) adjust for differences and figure it out.

So I would put on my rollerblades and hand out flyers.( I could fly on roller blades back then) Found out don't stick things in mailboxes.

All houses typically will have some sort of fixing up, whether it's a lot, or just a couple of fine tuning adjustments.

Since I hold my properties for a life time and my heirs will "probably" have an adjusted cost basis (if the rules don't change ;-) I avoid tax on the properties anyway.

Even the agent's commission is well worth it if it helps me buy more deals and sell those deals faster so I can move on to the next.So I'd say that if you adjust your thinking from being focused on cutting costs to doing whatever you need to do more deals, you'll not only be more successful but you'll be happier too because you're not stressing over every little dollar spent.

I'm trying to understand the motivation and reasoning behind why things are that way and this way hopefully i'll adjust my strategy moving forward.

The seller refused to adjust the price after finding out the third unit was not legal.Good luck with your journey.