In other words, if you have a beat-up roof on one of your properties, electrical wiring from the 1940's on another, and you can see soft spots of wood rot around windows and downspouts of the other, I would want to have a lot.

If they speak softly, you should too.

And I was polite and actually offered to help him shovel some snow he was working on ( he was a older gentleman).From what I could see she was asking to much ,so I called and tried negotiating with her ( rookie) and kind of came soft and said something like " Your asking price is high for a house in that neighborhood, could we work on your price?

Testing a tracking and tweaking is the key to success in this business.Put out here what you have closed in the last year and the volume of letters sent and frequency.As Sharon says I believe in highly targeted and filtered marketing.Volume is the number one mistake you can make.Either your letter sucks and you send to everyone and get no calls or your letter is good and you get bombarded.You then develop a rep from then on of not handling your business.It's kind of like a new restaurant opening and having tons of people come in from the advertising and the restaurant becomes a circus with bad food and service and long waits.Smart restaurants do a small "soft open" with little advertising to wait on customers and see what main issues arise.Then when the big advertising and grand opening hits they still have problems but many have been ironed out and systems have been put in place.

I'm looking at making a gross profit of $10k when it's all said and done.Here's the list of things to fix:New floor (at least 2 sheets of plywood to fix some soft spots)New kitchen sink, cabinets, counter tops.New carpet and tile.Fresh coat of paint for the walls and ceiling.New windows.

The second reason is more of a "soft" reason: it adds professionalism.

As part of this, you'll need to:1. hire a civil engineer, 2. have approved engineering plans prepared, plan checked, and permits issued, 3. pay the development impact fees and all other soft costs, 4. grade the site, and build the infrastructure for the project, i.e. utilities, street, drainage, etc. 

That's one reason why LA has the Soft Story Mandate and some cities give incentives/rebates for retrofitting the connections between the floor joists and the concrete foundation.A simple retrofit could greatly increase the odds and help protect home owners / real-estate investors to preserve most of their investment versus having a greatly damaged structure that is too expensive to repair.

I am not looking for feedback on what I am doing, as I have been involved for quite some time and it is a solid investment.I would love to hear what others are into as the current real estate market is soft and not going to be improving anytime in the near future.

Good article - many people fail to remember those soft costs (realtor fees, conveyance, town taxes, utilities etc).