Because of the income issue I have only qualified for a $50,000 equity loan, A fraction of the equity I've built up over the last 13 years.

You have lost the prior qualification.Divide the two years of "qualified use" by the number of years that you have owned the property at the time of sale, and you have the fraction to determine your exemption amount.Therefore, if your "non-qualified use" period is 8 years, you will be able to exempt two-tenths, or 20% of the capital gains under Section 121, but this is the "true" capital gains, the difference between what you paid for the property and what you sold it for.The other 80% will be taxed as Long Term Capital Gains, and you will also have to pay taxes on your Depreciation Recapture for the depreciation that you took while the property was a rental property..Of course, you could defer the taxes by purchasing another investment property.I explain how to do this in my book.I hope this helps.Good Luck.Michael Lantrip

I don't know how much appraisals go for but I'm sure its a tiny fraction of the money he will make in equity alone. 

Cap rates are a fraction of the NOI over the deal price.

Other competitors are businesses like HouseBuyerNetwork.com and ZBuyer.com.You'll find there are 2 kinds - exclusive leads which only you get and cost maybe $100 each, and non-exclusive leads which are sold to multiple investors at a fraction of the cost, but also a fraction of the value.  

The way I see it, they're paying me thousands of dollars a year in rent, and a couple of hundred bucks in concessions is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, and a fraction of what 1 month of vacancy would be.

Seattle is becoming like SF but prices are still a fraction of the home prices in SF while salaries are quite similar.

Once you've written your lease, you can always run it by an attorney for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase one from them.Now back to your original question, the list of clauses that every lease should have is very long, and they're all equally important.

I have excellent credit but since starting my business I don't have much savings and I make a fraction of what I used to make in software. 

With other repairs you can often exceed the value of the property.I usually market these types of properties to foundation company owner/investors as they can do the repairs for a fraction of anyone else.So where the numbers wouldn't work for other investors it works for them.I know one guy that buys these and does about 3 to 4 a year and makes over 100k on each one.The home buyers can't get a loan and most of the investors won't touch them so the bank dumps cheap for cash.I would venture to say your 15k estimate is on the low side.What most likely happens is the renovations costs more and the months it takes to sell the market slides more.