You can easily see a 100 year old house with a fresh roof, windows & hvac and you can see a 50s house with all of them towards the end of their useful life.  

I've heard a lot of strong opinions on "terminate immediately and start fresh."

I've heard a lot of strong opinions on "terminate immediately and start fresh."

@Aaron PetersonI moved your thread to the landlords forum.Snow removal ... it will be here before you know it ... .I've already put our RFQ as we were not happy with our service in one city last winter.In our experience, when it comes to landscaping/lawncare and snow removal, anytime you cannot define where one tenant's domain ends and another begins, the obligation falls to the landlord.If you have a side-by-side duplex or a row of townhouses where each tenant has their own drive and patch of green, you can hand-off snow removal and lawn care to the tenant ... though you are just as often better served to take care of it yourself and bake it into the rent.Anytime you have stacked units or a block (such as a small purposely built quadruplex), the parking and green space are common areas (just like stairwells in the interior) and fall to the landlord.

Most of the deals I do are with truly motivated sellers who can't wait that long or for some other reason don't want to sell through the traditional route and are willing to trade equity to avoid it.That said, be careful in analyzing your deals, and don't get caught up in the hype and pay more than you should because you baked appreciation into the numbers.

I would like to keep using a cheap, larger format tile (so that we minimize grout lines) with dark colored grout, but need some fresh ideas to modernize it a bit. 

I realize that this may need some light fixing up here and there since it's not freshly rehabbed.

I am in a position pretty similar to you, (freshly) 25, finished up college a little over a year ago, and looking at getting into this in the next 6 months and move to the Winchester, VA area.

I liked the tenant he found and decided to just do a fresh lease with him.

There is no "but-if" concerning if that authorization was revoked due to past due rent, or lack of baking a chocolate cake, or anything else.