Baths and kitchens could use some updating. 50 year old building.

One example that I am thinking of is you go into a house and say, "I am going to update the kitchen since it is small and outdated." 

Many individual MLS contracts now have regular addendum language in a check the box format. 

(But I am in California) send  a note describing items to the address you last have for her (I like the update advice given above) and give her the state allowed time.

Brokers like me can search the MLS (not much there these days), and you should also be meeting up regularly with commercial brokers in the space.

The place now is in fair condition, people live there, and it's decent, but not updated.

The properties we find tend to need updating or major renovation.

As someone who regularly sends out several hundred hand written envelopes a week, I'm also very interested in this question

looking for similar guidance, i found a 70k to 90k value estimated home, listed for 55k only work that i can tell from the pictures is updating the wallpaper to a basic egg white paint and i can do that myself in a 2 weeks or so.

I know there was at least one poster that was using peer to peer loans but I believe they were refinancing pretty quickly into a regular loan as the interest on those peer to peer loans is too high .