When I hauled away all the junk in the basement, painted its walls, and had the floor professionally scrubbed, lo and behold, the effective doubling of the house's useable square footage and the potential to create additional living space down there (maybe even a separate living area) became a nice selling feature to prospective buyers.

I like flat because it is easier to touch up, but you cannot scrub/clean it, so it is a hard call on a rental. 

Semi gloss paint will hold up a lot longer to cleaning and scrubbing.  

Though much of the house was revived with a deep scrub, primer and paint, the three rooms which encircled the epicentre of smoking had to be gutted to the studs.  

I'm not saying scrub their floors, but try to clear off some counter space, move the garbage cans away from the front of the house, keep the litter box out of the shot, etc.?

Hello RobertYou will learn a Hell of alot here on Bigger Pockets so stick aroundFrom what I can see Duncan does not have a very good report card,,,Having said that check out the reputation of any coach or course here on BP or simply Google the guys name like this "Joe Shmow Reviews" you'll get the good ,the bad and the ugly real fastI hate to say it but I have literally spent days on Craiglist trying to find that "motivated seller" with a fixer house for sale.Sadly I havent had much success .I have even recruited and paid for VA's in the Phillipines to scrub filter.call and pre qualify these "sellers" again without much success.Its interesting as some guys like Joe McCall build the whole focus of their marketing for their Lease Option and Wholesaling courses on fishin the Craigslist ads for sellers.That may have worked 3 years ago ,,,Im not so sure about today.Why? 

I also tell the owner I am confused on who is in charge here with house issues and owner also says well me but you can call H since I am not in state.I steam the carpets myself, we have painted paneling(which if you have ever you know what a B$%# that whole process is), room after room, scrubbed up the plumping repair filth (they did not even put the wall cover back over the exposed pipes!

This means it will be on time and when it comes to the move out is is typically the parents scrubbing the fridge and oven and making any necessary repairs to get the deposit back.

He said he'd give me a couple $12/hr guys to come in and scrub everything down in the basement.

Do you have them clean, wipe food off of walls, pull out appliances and clean under, scrub shower, clean carpets, etc.?