I'd focus on renovating to reduce expenses (repairs and vacancy) rather than to increase rents.Rents are based about 50% on location, 40% on the size of the unit, and 10% on everything else combined.

Or maybe you want to do a combination or start with one strategy and grow into another.

I like to copy what the large national builders are doing in my area as far as colors combinations.

Any combination of the above or anything else you want to research.

It is a combination of all vacancy factors (physical, loss to lease, collection, concessions, non-revenue units, etc.)For example: your subject property rents for $600/mo/unit and consists of 100 units (for simplicity of math).

My first 3 deals I did with a combo of hard money and the same lender did a bridge type loan for a combined 92% LTV on the purchase price and I went out of pocket for the fix up and payments....... the first 3 were all around $200,000 so I ended up having up words of $65,000 in each deal.The next 3 I did with a 80% ARV loan that is very expensive but finances 100% of the purchase and the fix up with no payments for the first 105 days..... so big leverage and a little less yeld but you can do more than 1 at a time for a small among of cash.The newest one I have is 70% of ARV with 2.5 pts and 11.5% interest.  

My specific goals: My short time goals is to place my house (was my primary  residence for two years) as a rental, and I buy a another income property this year (perhaps another SFR because I might not be able to fund the 25% down payment on a multi-family).My other specific goal to obtain $8,000 of passive income a month in 5 years, using a combination of SFR and Multi family units.

Keep in mind that they might combine your personal income and expenses with your business (rental) income and expenses to calculate this ratio.

If you plan to rehab it, you might consider a project / construction bridge loan combined with the acquisition loan.

I use a combination of Google Wallet, Intuit Payment Networks, Chase QuickPay and a couple other electronic payment vendors.