An idea that may help your new building to blend in with it's surroundings would be to put one full story below grade. 

Some say a new $50,000 kitchen is really only worth $25,000 and some say a finished basement in a 2-flat is below grade and won't increase the appraised value (it can work the other way and to your benefit as well but that happens rarely).You probably won't meet your appraiser prior to them coming out to the property. 

We sanded and poly-d (use a good commercial grade poly to be more forgiving of wear and tear) before we moved out and turned it into a rental. 

'That's above my pay grade' and 'yeah, right!' 

I've seen a lot of discussion on the forums about property grading, meaning what an "A" property is, what a "B" property is, etc.But what about tenants?

Considering mid-grade for a flip:Paint should be around 1.5k - 2.5k with paint and prepCarpets should be around 2-3k?

I doubt any contractor builds a porch to standards required for an addition, it would be ineffective cost wise to overbuild a porch, but then again, If I did it, it probably would have been overbuilt.I'm the only guy in this area that used RR ties as piers for a deck 3'above grade, with 2x12s as joists for an 8 to 10 ft, span!

In your case with 5% down it's 1.05 which most banks wouldn't touch unless in some cases for commercial where it's a 100 year old tenant investment grade business like a Walgreens or CVS.I do not know what recourse you have.

It's usually not cost effective unless you are landlocked and cannot do an at grade addition.

They would be the folks on the ground to manage the property should I ever go the Minneapolis route.That being said, my first preference would be right here in Los Angeles where I suspect the value of my real estate might have a better" head room" than real estate in my "pay grade range" in Minneapolis.Ali –Thanks for the thumbs up with regards to what I suspect might work.The biggest question I have been juggling is whether to focus on LA which I would actually prefer IF the cost of entry makes sense once the numbers are crunched.To this end, I attended my first foreclosure meetup seminar last night and came away with some great pointers that are SoCal focused.