Replacing the HVAC & water heater only increase the value if the old ones were decreasing the property value.

Using this strategy allows you to decrease your cost of living and have someone else paying most, if not all of your mortgage, for a property they don't even own!

I've been holding onto my W-2 income simply for the allowance of getting a home loan and realize once I convert full time 1099 my chances of getting the loan decrease significantly.

However, beating the market cap generally means a value add that increases NOI via either an increase in revenues or a decrease in expenses. 

Do rates decrease when you are loyal to one insurer?

It was my temporary property manager and different than the person I spoke to earlier today.

Sometimes you can buy something at a 6 cap fully stable with under market rents and increase rents and decrease costs to get an 8 or 8.5 cap etc.The syndicator you are planning on investing with needs to plan out exits and return of capital to the investors.I think a lot of stuff people are nuts paying those prices for things.

Cap rate = NOI/Purchase price Therefore,  if you can increase your NOI by either decreasing expenses or increasing revenue, your cap rate will go up. 

So if you know you want to invest in Pittsburgh (just to make up a random city) and your plan is to scale to 10, 20, 30, etc. units then you really decrease the marginal travel costs. 

They seem to do a temporary fix, but eventually in 3 months it repeats.