In which case the probability of the IRS examining your return, discovering the grey area issue, taking the opposite position, and winning on appeal would have to be greater than 80% for your expected losses to be higher than just paying it.In their best year ever the IRS is never going to get that probability above 2%At 2%, we are risking an expectation of losing $2.50 by 'going grey' against an expectation of losing $100 by not going into the grey. 

Hi, @Mel Hayes.I have appealed hundreds of properties for both myself and our clients over the years.  

This approach tends to appeal to computer programmers, a new segment of the freshly affluent in our society who have made plenty of money out of math and are already half-deluded by their success in computers into believing that equations applied to concrete, earth, wood, steel, human failings, weather, and the inexorable passage of time will yield a golden system that anyone can use to become fabulously wealthy out of land and the structures built on it.Regard the mathletes and their beliefs with a healthy dose of skepticism, drill down past all the fascination to what these numbers are supposed to offer you in the way of insight, and you'll be fine.

The county had lowered the property valuation, but since we purchased it the school board filed an appeal on the valuation. 

The BTA ruled that “where the owner of rental property devotes it rental purposes and exclusively to the production of taxable income, the property is used by him in a trade or business”.On appeal, the 6th Circuit came to the conclusion that the building (rented to multiple tenants) was a TB, but they got there via different means.

Is it purely price driven or is there something about the area that appeals more to you as an investor and your tenants as renters?  

But yeah, a crappy looking driveway kills any chance of good curb appeal, that first impression.  

Brooklyn seems like more of a working-class neighborhood with more families, so a one bedroom naturally appeals to a smaller market there. 

I would appeal for it based upon your FMV you acquired for.

While superficial/curb-appeal stuff you'll typically be okay, but that kitchen and your ballpark remo estimate might hurt it.