The landlord shall not recover or take possession of the dwelling unit by action or otherwise, including willful diminution or interruption or causing or permitting the diminution or interruption of any essential item or service required by the rental agreement or this chapter, except: 1.

I hear apartment buildings and some people think duplex,tri-plex,quad.I define it as 5 or more units for commercial purposes that will use the income approach as compared to the comparable sales approach and commercial financing versus traditional lending.Each size of building and units will have various things to analyze.You first need to define how much money you have to actually get started and that will determine to an extent what size you start out with among many other factors.

You might also find that having more eyes on the project might show that some contractors miss items, and maybe there is one who will catch something that others miss.

This is the one item that is hard to predict, but can ruin and dissolve a partnership quickly.

When you purchase a mortgage or deed of trust, that security instrument prevails over all subsequent actions on title with exceptions for government liens and taxes (and a couple other items).

The improvement cost includes items like WAC and SAC, park dedication, trunk charges, architectural charges, demolition cost, purchase cost, etc,.

Also OP gave us the number for the debt service, use that to analyze his deal, and suggest he can lower it at the end of analysis.Manuel, I think people are getting tripped up by your terminology, 50% covers all expenses expected over the lifetime of the investment, not just repairs/maintenance, this includes vacancies etc.It's a guideline for rough analysis, but understand it and use it correctly.Edit: OP did mention debt service and TI as separate line items, so my calculations stand asides from Hoa and 50% maintenance cross over.

Also should mention that almost none of the reputable brokers will not collect any fee at all unless a loan is successfully placed, and that is collected at closing. many of the household name life insurance companies will only lend on the higher quality assets owned by the top sponsors, but there are a number of lesser known companies who will do smaller and more traditional deals.  

CRIME is a big one.The percentage of non-violent to violent infractions and if crime is increasing or decreasing in the immediate area.Intermodal transportation study is another and the future land use map.This will give you an idea of where they are today and what they have planned for the area in the future and how the city and county will be allocating their resources to develop certain areas.Much more items than this but it's been a long day and my brain is out of fuel........ :)

That said, personally, I like to have the *major* stuff inspected ASAP - my roofer will do a quick check out if I buy him lunch & my Hvac guy will check that out for ~$50 - those two items are expensive & if they're not right, you want to ask for an adjustment at the beginning of a short-sale & make sure the lender knows they're bad.