But I'd also guess that there are others out there that would beg to differ with her "magic number".

Does anyone know Section 8's magic formula for determining rent?

With that, a magic eraser, some Windex, Clorox with bleach spray, a good scrubby sponge and a pile of paper towels you can clean just about anything.

Its more of a numbers game than a magic list.

There IS NO MAGIC DUST to get your fico score up, dont pay for a service to do this.

Need to understand that just forming an LLC is not a magic bullet to protect your personal assets, the "stock ownership" of your LLC is a personal asset, if you have a personal matter and are under insured, your business assets may be at risk anyway.

Banks want to lend on performing assets.  2 years is a magical number for most.  2-3 is longer that most hard money but it does give a private lender a cycle to their money that is more desirable than the long stretch.  

If I had a magic elf to help us out, I would put them on the task of driving by each property once a month for exterior observation and would have them do on-site visits each season, with a checklist of maintenance items.

Maybe someone else doesn't mind working for free, or thinks a 700sf house will magically appreciate huge in my market (never going to happen), or has a bunch of surplus stuff and can do this reno for $20k.

So here were we buy deeds, not tax liens, new deed gets filed and that can trigger a response from the mortgage company in their back office magic and they they get redeemed.