Assuming its a good opportunity/good colateral, the debt is easiest to secure and equity is significantly more difficult.

This change permits owners of IRAs who are 70 and a half or older to transfer up to $105,000 in 2024 from their IRAs directly to a qualified charity and avoid income tax on those amounts.

I know it is logical to think you could deduct half of the shared common space, but unfortunately the tax law wasn't written to allow that.  

For more extensive rehab's like if you're adding walls and stuff like that, it's easiest just to have a contractor or 2 give you a quote. 

To me that's the easiest lowest cost scenario. 

Getting started is half the battle.I see @Nathan Gesner gave you a good book recommendation.

I've seen a nice front side only to drive to the back ally and see the back half gone and totally open....like a bomb went off or something.   

Maybe you already have a huge stock portfolio in addition to your $200k, I don’t know…But any 24 year old with $200k saved should be putting at least half of that in the stock market in a well diversified total market or SP500 etf and just forget about it.

I have even wondered if maybe instead of buying our house with cash, financing at least maybe half of it so that I have an extra 200k to invest. 

He's paying 2% of his total loan but only getting half a point off his rate.