I'm paying 125,000 for it, plus renovations, which all get rolled into escrow.My goal is to keep the house, but harvest the equity in a few years to spring into rental properties.

I would upgrade a slummy looking kitchen or bath with builder grade materials or do tweaks to something old looking but in good condition (refinish a pink cast iron tub, use oil based paint to cover dated bath tile in good condition, paint good condition cabinets white and add new counters)

The place seems clean and well-kept. 4 minutes from CTA station on brown/pink line.

The person who installed pink wallpaper in a changing room at my house and painted clouds in one room clearly had a different preference of things than me.  

So, I got a full survey done and today the surveyor came back and set the pins and pink flags.

I do actual promotional products with my logo on it and pink Swag.

Wholesaleing_driving for dollars, send out pink post cards, buy list.

That , together with the pink stuff after, will stop the itch for 8 hours or so and you can sleep all night. 

Good luck...Yeah - I 100% agree with you ... this was just harvesting some material before the backhoe comes in and knocks the thing down.  :-)  Unfortunately no cool moulding or door knobs or anything of much interest... just the original fir floorboards (*beautiful* tight grain) we'll do something neat with.Been working on this project for 20 months or so - it's an urban subdivision and new home construction.  

The basic data points as I think of them:---What is your gross rental income per booking---What is your cost per welcome basket---What is the increase in chance of a repeat booking, based on the presence of the welcome basket---Secondarily, what is the change in likelihood of a great review, based on presence of welcome basket     If you have a high gross rental income per booking (say average $5k per booking), and you can offer an incredibly high impact welcome basket at a low cost (say the basket costs $20 but includes dates harvested from the date palm trees located on the property), you will likely find this yields huge returns in repeat bookings and reviews.