The neighboring homes should ALWAYS be assessed before making a final decision and a home looking like that should negatively impact your decision to purchase it, for flip, for hold, for ental, for anything.

I did the 'Drive-by' on all the properties and also looked at the assessed values on county site.

If you have a property that is located in an area where vandalism is the sport of the day, you can't really tie a set reserve to any index, like property value or rents, it will have to come from experience with that property.Being in a financial positiomn to cover any uninsured damage is the goal, if you can do that from day one without a "sinking fund" startegy, all well and good, but if you can't, I suggest you set aside all that you can initially and establish your reserve as quiclkly as you can (hopefully before your fisrt lease is over).What you need to assess is the risk of wear and tear as well as damage that is uninsurable for each property and then assess the risk in light of the probability of losses occuring at or near the same time on other properties.Never think that since you have quality "maintenance free" properties in great locations that you won't have any expense in the first or first few years.

The terms of any installment contract will need to be underwritten if it is not an excluded transaction.Three, before you get into a contract, you need to underwrite or assess the ability of the buyer to perform and more often than not, terms, conditions and covenants will need to address issues concerning any deficiency the buyer may have.

Or, a tax assessment?

I agree that's still alot, but let's look to at the total tax liability of all assessments, that's what I'm most interested in, the net change after all the little fees, assessments and taxes are calculated on the total income, what will that figure be?

This will give you a more realistic assessment of your return, but is obviously dependent on your being able to forecast your rehab expenditures.

My initial assessment was that without including holding and selling costs there was $84,000 on the table.

Many times when assessing farm land, (or any other property) we always look first to the highest and best use for the property.

Back taxes, sewer assessments, clouds on title, rehab costs to bring properties current with new ordances and knowing that a government entity will be acquiring the property in the future (but when being an unknown) all are part of your due diligence.