Any landlords out there in the Greater Cedar Rapids, Iowa City area sick of their Coin-Op laundry suppliers? 

Lastly, if you follow markets the ability of a firm to basically play both sides of the coin does not always end well. 

Ideally, I'd like to get bids before I place an offer in order to have a good handle on the rehab costs and place my offer accordingly, but on the other side of the coin, I could potentially place offers on many different properties before having one accepted, all the while I'm getting bids from contractors for which the job for them doesn't materialize.Or, do I visit the properties myself and with my agent, make an very rough estimate of rehab costs, make an offer based on the estimate, and then bring contractors in for bids *after* getting the property under contract, then potentially renegotiate the offer price if the bids come in higher than estimated?

Everyone has covered the owner occ/versus primary residence piece and the county by county millage difference.However the other side of the coin must also be considered in order to evaluate.

I can recommend Barry Scott (Scott & Co) in Raleigh (He has done many surveys for me in Raleigh/Chapel Hill).  

Paid $96k for a 2 Bedroom, 1 bath HUD home in downtown Windsor, CO in Nov. 20133.5% down, FHA with escrow account - we had 30 days to paint exterior, get water, gas, electric turned on.

Just like I tell other people in my industry(mechanic integrity inspection/NDE) that get discouraged because of the amount of information...I've coined this phrase btw.  

If you cannot convert it into really useable space, what if you split it in half and put coin op washer/dryers on one side for your tenants use, and on the other side, put storage areas that tenants can rent for an additional fee.

That could be another non-traditional asset such as notes, crypto currency, etc., or conventional stocks, bonds and mutual funds.The advantage of real estate is that it is not purely an appreciation play as so many equities investments are.  

Another rule that I also go buy is what I call The ARC, that's not the name but I coined it for myself as that's how I remember it.