It still costs more than big box contractor grade paint. 

My mother is going on the routine inspection for the quarter with myself and she is giving the tenants small gifts, boxes of chocolate for christmas.

On a property in that price point of your listing, it's going to take some outside-the-box thinking and marketing to attract more buyers.

We advertise on their box tops the first seven days of the month5.

Actually I plan to just pay the $500 fee that gets me the sign, an MLS listing, flyers, virtual tour, lock box, contract help, etc.

Looking at our budget, we having to consider updating both bathrooms some but leaving things like the florescent light boxes above the vanities in and the cultured marble (aka fake cheap marble), or we can fully update the master bath and just do some small things like paint the guest bath.  

(I will now step off the soap box. 

Would you recommend having them pay me their rent or maybe setting up a PO box?

So now bring in the electrician to dig a trench and run new 220v cables from junction box to the pump EXCEPT by now the pool is disgusting because there's no pump clearing out the water... the city actually can charge a penalty for having a "dark" pool due to safety issues of a kid falling in and no being able to see the bottom...so, we had to drain the pool extra cost about $300 or so if I remember. 2)  So now after draining the pool, putting in the new pump with new wiring and re-filling the pool with thousands of gallons of water that isn't free (not too mention I live in CA with the drought and my conscience is screaming at me about the waste)...we find that the pool is constantly being re-filled by the "auto fill"...somewhere, somehow there's a leak and we're wasting even more water and money...so, I had to call in a leak detection specialist who thankfully found the leak at the filter and not in the actual pool itself...Another $1,500 in unexpected costs.So, long story short, fixing up the pool cost about the same as removing it, refilling with sod, getting a new fence but now we have a nice updated pool and it should help the value a little bit when we go to sell.

At the end of seminar he asked those who did not sign up to please exit the room and to meet his Colleagues to get our packets down the hall which we walked down found him standing there with a box and packets inside handed us the packets and said write this down a web site and said also a lot of the things covered are also accessible online and I asked for he last name he responded”I CANNOT GIVE YOU MY LAST NAME”  company policy conflict of interest.