You might try driving around your area and see if you can find any ongoing projects similar in nature as to what you have in mind and attempt to have talks with the contractors on site or even the owners if they are available. 

They can literally see us walk in/out of the bathroom unless we have the curtains drawn, but then there's no natural light in the living room.We would like to build an 8-ft tall cinder block wall (similar to our one with the other neighbor) between us and the apartments.

I bought a distressed property, so naturally protested the value as soon as the house was mine. 

We originally wanted to only use her RE lic. for our flip properties but...she is a natural and already has 3 sales in her first month.

I don't think that really applies, since you have to have the place for a year anyways.My only other two cents is to convert that heating to gas instead of oil.

I think it's just the natural thing that happens in an investors brain at a certain point of their house hunting.  

The oil glut and resulting collapse in oil prices, political instability due to what appears to be embezzlement by PM Najib Razak, and the possibility of higher US interest rates has driven the Ringgit to a 17 year low.

With the right person everything else flows naturally.

I make plans all the time, daily, and then the natural course of events tends to dictate how closely those plans get followed - they don't last very long.Goals on the other hand are great!

Buy all cash and repair, get tenants in them and then do a cash-out refinance with a conventional lender to get my cash back.My market has been consistent with values of housing and rental market but has recently gotten much hotter as we are seeing some effects of an oil boom that is happening about 45 miles west of us.