What you are not including is vacancy, capital improvements, turnover costs etc.

To what extent does landscaping typically add value to a property for the purposes of appraisal and re-financing, compared to other improvements? 

But I also sometimes think owning only 1 property in LA would be less stressful and a more reasonable mortgage payment would improve my quality of life.

Ideally AI could improve the property analytics that shape listing prices, a competitive advantage over other brokers.

In my case, I wasn’t sure my land qualified because it was essentially my back yard, but because it was always a separate lot from my house, I was able to still do it because raw land without improvements on it is always considered investment property.

But as some one who was raised in this business has owned 3 brokerages I can tell you that only 10 to 20% of agents make 80% of the revenue wash out rate is high.. with Wholesaling I suggest that only 5 % who try it are still doing it in a year and in any given market there will be a handful of wholesalers that do pretty good to very good the rest just trundle along now granted if they make 50 to 100k a year in the mid west and were used to making 20 to 30k in their JOB this is a big improvement over where they were at..

One of the things you can start doing is reviewing your credit score and work on improving it if needed.

Let someone else buy the fringe areas and improve them first.To be direct, I can't imagine an appraiser using 5-year-old comps.

Your profit is the difference between your adjusted cost basis and your net sale.Adjusted cost basis is your cost of acquisition plus any capitalized improvements minus depreciation.It is very possible that you could sell a property you have refinanced and generate no cash at the sale but still have a big tax bill because you sell it for more than you purchased it for.

Focus on the value landlords bring through property improvements, market dynamics driving rents, and contributions to community revitalization.