You do everything you can to be seen by them as part of the solution to the neighborhood's problems, not part of the problems.Granted, we all know landlords too dumb to think about the importance of quality internal and external public relations.

But external foundation sheathing and an external footer drain is typically a last-resort scenario reserved for extreme cases.I'm not there.

In most cases, it's that they're lazy, they just don't care, and/or there are external factors at work that are getting in their way of selling.When an investor goes through the effort of seeking out these kinds of property owners and making the sale process very easy for them, there are some incredible deals to be had.

You can't control external factors other than by diversifying... spreading your rentals throughout different neighborhoods while still keeping them with 20-30 minutes of your home.

Understand external obsolescence factors as well, changes in social perceptions of an area can effect your holdings over time.Be careful with the assessment of market value and assessed tax values as taxes lag on a depreciating property, if it goes down at all, taxes increasing or remaining the same while rent levels drop can cost you. 

Each of you have touched a few areas I have been identifying as something I can automate,External lights on a timer (great for security purposes)Online applications, fee collectionsBill/credit paymentsAnd it certainly sounds like automating inquiries for rental properties using a call service will save a lot of time.

Hopefully the pipes are on internal walls, and not external.

Below is what I've created in the past:And once selected:Everything you see there is a link to some external source which passes either the MLS# or the address to a Google search.

We used in house and external attorneys, one of which is counsel to FDIC matters.

Additionally the domain in question needs other external sites linking in to it to attain higher positioning in the SE's.