Also, timing those improvements can be very advantageous to you for tax benefits and additional cash-flow.

If you’ve significantly improved the property and have a lease in place you’ll likely have luck finding a lender who’ll do a 75-80% LTV cash-out note.

Get a solid track record of generating leads YOURSELF till you know through and through how, and why it worksThen test, scale tweak improve it.Now you know your system is solid, you turn it into a system by writing EVERY step of the procedure on paper and test it againNow you can hire an employee and have them do that task, Teach them, make them understand the hows and whys and supervise them, alwaysThis is what you need to do.

My property tax assessment doesn't show a breakout for the land vs building/ improvements.

The cash flow situation is expected to improve more substantially than the lower cost market.The higher initial cash flow market is typically the lower cost markets (or higher risk markets). 

Keep in mind, like many things, survey accuracy has improved in the last fifteen years. 

If another heir does make a claim, you could deduct the reasonable and necessary costs of renting the property (but not the costs of improvements). 

@Evelina KhaimovaBelieve it or not, it might actually be more profitable for you to purchase a BRRRR in a neighborhood that does not have the best schools but is likely to improve in the near future.

Also, be on site to talk through all the renovations, and have a printed list of the improvements you performed.  

You can try to influence it by improving your unit(s) on the edge of a higher priced area and catch some overflow, but that's very hard to do in the middle of an area.2) HOA's typically only take care of external maintenance.