I paid about $8 for electricity and $5 for water for August - these expenses are so minuscule, that I completely forgot about them.

For example, my duplex has brand new furnaces, hot water heaters, and AC units, and the roof is 5 years old.

That sounds good until you factor in dealing with 15 different low income families , 15 hot water heaters , 15 roofs , property tax and water bills .

They want hard cash in most cases, not someone wanting to flip the contract because that means the bank is leaving money in the table.

From what I've seen it looks about 40k in Portland. 10-15k in rural Washington county, but Im not sure I found all the fees and I haven't found info for rural Multnomah county or any other city yet. rural means no city water or sewer so well and septic and if you don't have those U can spend at least 10 to 15k on a well and water system and septic 15k to 50k.. depending on soil.plus your 5 to 10 k in building permits.. then your ready for vertical.. so city fee's are usually cheaper.now place like Yamhill or Carlton you can find little funky infill and fee's there will be less than 20k.. maybe Banks Gaston etc.its tough for land here. 

That would be muddying the waters between the HOAs books and your books.

He charged me $2k to purchase and install a 75 gal gas water heater, and dispose of the old.

A roof over the head and food on the table.

We tend to attract recent university or college grads to out unit, young people that are still looking for a less expensive place but are sick of living in houses with 4 other people.For the last 7 years we have had a nice chocolate brown laminate flooring down there but there's been some water damage in one room.

Tenants pay all utilities except for the water bill.