Document everything with copies of receipts and photographs.

I want to find a local attorney that can help me appeal my property taxes.

Curb appeal or interior renovation might be justifiable to raised rents.

Would it make sense for you to try to appeal to summertime vacationers by seeking out a property near a lake with water sports?

You have low property taxes, low rents, high cap rates to compress, utility expenses were manageable,etc.These days cap rates are low for the good areas, most rent growth has already happened, counties and cities are out like crazy raising property taxes and even if you appeal and win they still go up some, and utility companies like water even with no leaks are raising the water and sewer per gallon usage rates because they kept flat in the down turn.If you add all of these things up for the yield versus more passive commercial assets I do not like multifamily at this point in the cycle as much as I did 4 to 5 years ago. 

The Flippers are buying anything that has some kind of achitechtural appeal and gutting it to create those gem type houses that you see on the Flipper shows on TV, but, your neighbor may be raising pit bulls and have junk cars and cook crack cocaine in the kitchen.

Yes, it is appealing for them but more importantly it is much more manageable for me.  

I lived in the Spokane area for 18 years, so it has that familiarity that appeals to me.

So you could potentially be more appealing to the banks once you have a rental property than before, even though you have more debt.

My family never owned the homes we lived in so the stability of real estate ownership has appealed to me for a long time.