Should rent credit be applied toward purchase with the increased portion of rent?  

Simple solution there is when you contact your buyers list you tell them that the expectation is that they also pay the sellers prorated portion of the taxes owed and say how much that is.  

Hi, My wife and I are semi-retired and decided to invest a good portion of our 401k in real estate.  

Another thing to keep in mind is that some places require the plot of land to be a certain size if you want to convert to a duplex.  

A few months ago around Christmas time we were doing a bathroom remodel for a new homeowner on a house that was flipped, the master bathroom was a disaster, there isn't enough space to go into all the things wrong, so I'll just tell you about the bathtub - jetted tub they bought from Home Depot, so it was a de-engineered Jacuzzi model, low horsepower pump, less jets than the non Home Depot version, but it looked new and shiney. 1) Tub wasn't sitting on the sub-floor, was suspended by it's rim, even it they had built the tub deck correctly to size based on everything else I sure they wouldn't have poured a mortar base for it to sit in.

I really want to build a nice size portfolio and have tremendous CF by the end of this year but I need to start now.

Like many small-medium sized towns in Nebraska, there's a housing shortage and properties priced right move quickly.  

Now the basement can be your Unicorn in a house that size and get a quick sale.  

Each market will offer a different property type (SFR vs MFR, age, size, location, etc.) and a different price range.

In that case I keep the receipts and periodically give him an update on what the total spent is so that he knows to deduct it from our price for that portion of the work.