But, a nicely designed and painted house with well thought-out accent walls, etc may subconsciously contribute to my higher classifying in quality and condition, which may somewhat influence value, but not necessarily significantly.Good luck!

Alabama counties don't all designate it the same, but in the largest county, Jefferson, R/S means that no one bid on the property at the tax sale so the property was bid in by the state and then it was ReSold to an investor. 

Simply because the design doesn't promote death benefit, it promotes cash value growth.

After posting I saw in your profile you are a software engineer.....What would be REALLY cool...If you could develop an easy to use Gantt chart software (Think Microsoft Project, but WAY easier to use) that was designed specifically for Real Estate reno / BRRRR. 

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

I think I paid $30 bucks for it and never updated quicken to a paid subscription as I don't need any of those annual fee features. 

I believe that the design of the property wouldn’t be a problem, however I would like some ideas on how to make this lot buildable in the eyes of the zoning department.

Before I bought it I was buying real estate giving myself and my daughter something to do, my lily girl (Alice kate) was disabled and a single father it gave us something to look forward to every day rehabbing apartments, I started doing some research on turning a small complex into something for her and design it for her wheelchair in case something would ever happen to me, she would have her own place ,in my research I seen assisted living facilities and thought thats what she needs something with nurses. well I found this 4000sqft building and it was an ALF I made the owner an offer and bought it!

Our compromise was to design the upstairs to be like a private in-law suite so it could be rentable on Airbnb when we choose to do so.

But I suspect EPA didn't design a special rule for tax lien and foreclosure investors, who are limited in the due diligence they can legally perform.