They ended up stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. 

Even if you try to put a dollar amount next to each item and you don't have much experience, you won't be that far off.

I would do one in the living room and another outside mid-way between the living room and your nearest neighbor. 

This puts the agent in a pickle trying to explain why 10k is not enough commish and they should get 15K etc etc even though they have the buyers brokers agreement the buyer wants to use those extra dollars in our case for upgrades not to pay their agent..  

The renovation could cost tens of thousands of dollars or maybe there is a foundation issue they're not telling you about.

Especially if they are already paying top dollar for them.   

This PM will be trusted with the accounting, collection, and transfer, of tens of thousands of your dollars, or more.

Using your own funds to pay down your loan so you get a bigger loan sounds like a zero sum gain (aka IE using 1 dollar to pay down loan so you can net 1 more dollar from the new proposed loan) So how are you going to net more cash when spending 1 dollar to get another 1 dollar ?

Initially rented to long-term tenants, it generated modest cash flow of a few hundred dollars a month with a 4.25% rate.

Quote from @Carlos Lopes: Gross income doesn't matter.This is the number most people post, and it's 92.7% useless.What you need is NET income, meaning the money left over after all expenses, and that should include a dollar amount for your personal time spent operating the business.