You can just clean it up enough or fix up to a certain standard you set.  

Yes, depending on your activity, you get the deduct interest incurred for your loan.

While a 30-day close is standard, offering to make this happen sooner is always better.

Compare what you are finding to market and comp standards on all of your underwriting.Property currently not being profitable and bad PM, it could be both with the information given in the post.

Continuing education is pretty standard for any professional license. 

I'm wondering whether the new tax law, with the limitations on SALT deductions and limitations on mortgage interest deductions, will cause the retail single family home market around Boston to soften......I believe this is happening in the suburban areas around NYC.

We were going to have a formal inspection done before making an offer just to be crystal-clear on what we would be dealing with, but the realtor suggested we save some time and money by having a contractor take a look to help us determine the repairs required, and subsequently how much we should offer.Is this pretty standard practice as far as "due diligence" goes? 

@Kyle Joseph 25% is pretty standard for non-owner occupied investment properties.  

Such as Advertising cost can be deducted.

The Austin market is still going strong and we live in a very desirable area.We *could* roll up some debt and take our mortgage to 284k.This would increase our mortgage payment by 566/month, but by reducing the monthly minimum payments with the debt disappearing we would gain an additional 1000-1100/month (after the 566 is deducted).I'm also aware that mortgage interest is something we can deduct from our annual taxes vs. other debt which we can't...This is not our forever home, but we've had so much equity in our home for so long that I can tell I'm fearful to cut into our equity, but I don't want baseless emotion to make this decision and keep us tied to something that we're not looking to stay in forever.