So I've been making improvements on the home since around September of last year, it looks great, and it has been a ton of slow progress especially learning many things for the first time and doing them myself.

Looking forward to seeing how you progress!

(Progress.)

I don’t know what direction or the best strategy for progression and growth in the real estate and rental business.

that is in progress and I will update this in the futureLessons learned?

The facts are this:Duplex built in 1980 with detached (2) 1 car garagesRent for long-term tenant is currently $825 while rentometer says it averages out to $1015 for the areaRent for the recently remodeled (5 years ago) for the short-term tenant is $1000Neither tenant utilizes the garageProperty taxes are $2,797.20 annuallyThe owners opinion of value is $285-300k (assessed value at $251,587)Factoring vacancy at 5% (current area is at .2%), 10% management, no capital improvements included as I'm rolling the management fee with that as I would self-manage for this first go around.

I will come back and add some details and more photos of the ongoing progress. 

The fire dept turned off the water at the street by the time our guy got there, and the City quickly got involved exerting a fair amount of pressure.In the interests of keeping this story short, these are all the things that we had to do: Communicate with the property owner, the tenants, and the city constantly, offer hotel rooms to affected tenants (some took us up on this), secure the building from future squatters, get the water main and all pipes thawed out, have the water company turn the water on at the street, have a crew of plumbers isolate and repair/replace broken pipes in a muddy crawl space, clean up the mess created by the water in the basement/crawl space, get into all apartments to inspect for damage, test and get water service restored, and repair some internal damage to one of the apartments (that's still in progress), and apologize to the tenants. 

Be supportive and know the right “hat” to wear and when.I wish you all the best and please keep us posted on your progress.

Hi Boris, what is your current assessment of the San Diego housing market?