When I owned properties in Houston, Atlanta and other places, I was always replacing roofs, siding, aging plumbing, faulty electrical systems and dealing with vegetation and termites.

Other than that, just freshen it up like Matt Pritchard said.On the outside looks like main thing would be getting the vegetation off the house and a good pressure washing.

@Benjamin Cook Nice!

Mobile's economy is cooking, and is set to keep growing thanks to the aggressive buisness attitude of our state and local politicians.

I can 'analyze' a real estate deal much better than a stock.However, I just hope the day never comes when I have to go around collecting rent in fresh vegetables or possum skins or whatever my tenants have to barter as rent.

Cook county doesn't cashflow for crap.

Luckily cook county lets us do this online which is here in chicago.

Allen - Robert Irwin - Robert Kiyosaki - Robert Shemin - Ron LeGrand - Russ Whitney -Ted Thomas - Wade Cook - Wealth Builders - Just to name a few.Ten's of thousands of dollars later I had so much knowledge that I thought my head would burst and on top of it all I was scared to death to step out and do what I had learned so I got another job and the living paycheck to paycheck continued until a dear friend asked me how long have I been stupid.Yes he upset me greatly but he helped me pull my head out of the lower part of my body and I started to put action into what I've learned about real estate investing.When it was all, said and done I turned my life around from living paycheck to paycheck to being worth millions!

You'll be able to tell by the look and feel of those properties' interiors if they were done by investors or not.Then you can go to the Cook County Assessor's Website (or whatever county you're searching in), search the address of that particular house and you can find the tax record with the owner information on it.

You can cook the numbers in your head however you want.I consider my HELOC interest as an expense of sorts, but the principal is just my own money I am "saving".