I highly doubt this rises to the level of mortgage fraud.

Clear a driveway and start to clear out a place for the house, on the best location on the lot (look for a slight rise, and in most towns around us, you want to be back a bit from the road.)Cut the trees you drop into cordwood and split it.

MLS is broker listings, not owner listings and listing prices are frequently optimistically inflated to please the client. 

They do rise to the occasion and appreciate that I am taking action, not just ignoring the problem.I think monitoring the problem more closely to get to the root cause and involving the tenants in that effort will pay off.Reduction of waste in the first place would be a good goal for not only your bottom line but for the environment.Passing the garbage bill onto the tenants may be introducing some ill will, especially since you just did a rent raise.

Salem is cheaper than Portland but I would caution buying "break even" cash flow properties or buying properties based on speculation / inflation.

You would be able to strategize how to handle that situation versus blinding walking into rising insurance costs.

You would simply have trapped equity in a paid off house not putting the money to work for you so with inflation the money would be worth less than the year before.

Make sure before you even do that step that the rents the seller is claiming are not inflated.

I am definitely not a fan of the incumbent commission/percentage based system as I feel it helps inflate housing prices.Of all the parties involved in a real estate deal in the US, usually only the buyer wants the deal to close at a lower value.

I'm sure in San Diego staging costs will be a little bit more inflated as opposed to NC.