And if you do not do it properly, it is easy to accidentally dime yourself out to the lender.

I can tell you from experience, if by some chance you can negotiate a short sale, if you put one dime in your pocket outside of closing, you could have a roommate and share a bunk in a state facility that feeds you three times a day.

Don't nickel and dime the seller just because you like to negotiate.

I think every dime of cash flow the property produces should be saved in order to scale up.

There are many cities like this across America, and as @Matt M. mentioned, those economic factors don't turn on a dime barring major political/economic events.

Do you landlords allow tenant to make repairs/updates to the property themselves on their dime?

I may have a credit card with a $10M limit...but it doesn’t cost me a dime until I use it.I hope this helped.Stephen

If he agrees and was a very long term tenant I would be reasonable lenient on what I charge him for....pretty broad on reasonable wear and tear, but if he F'd up the place with his own crap work I never authorized or trashed it beyond reasonable, then I would deduct as indicatedBefore I would fully commit to any plan of "he was there 10 years and was a good tenant, just give him his full deposit back" I would need to really see what the property is like........ if its decent, I would happily aggress to that..... but until then, don't stop the eviction processKeep going on the eviction and don't accept a dime of $$.....

@Ericka Grant , the problem I have with upsizing is that many people do it as soon as they get an extra dime in their pocket. 

Their participation is 100% passive, and we offer them a preferred return (we don't see a dime out of cash flow until their pref return is met), a 70/30 - 80/20 split on their favor after that, and typically the same split on every capital event.