If you're lucky you might be able to fill the cracks and give it a fresh coat of kills, not suggesting you hide anything, but a little bit of sweat, even if you don't own it may payoff.

.* If you really want to go further, you can look at using Trusts to hide ownership.

You have to find out where opportunity is hiding, and go kick in that door and demand opportunity come with you.

I've rehabbed a ton of 1940's and 1950's homes and if you do them right and don't hide any issues, you'll quickly find that they're a money suck.

Here is the before and with the vines off...we still didn’t get all the little hairs of the vines off so we went with a dark color to hide what we couldn’t get. 

Underwriters get really suspicious if the "find" something they think you're trying to hide.

As for your question about who should pay for the screening report, personally, I believe that any tenant that's not willing to pay for their own screening report is either hiding something or may not ultimately be 100% interested in your property.

I don’t want to hide gold bars under my bed.

We are not trying to hide anything.

Investors know the contractor has to make a profit, and I like to work with contractors who are transparent and up front about what their profit margin and fee is - not someone who is trying to bake it into the cost and hide it from the investor or client.