I always wanted to do it, when I was living there, it would improve the property value, but should I do it while its occupied?

Personally I would not send a letter or an email .i would drive right over there immediately walk rIght up to the door and tell the idiot to hIs face to lose the dog or he will be evicted then I’d hand him the quit or pay notice right then and tell him to improve his conduct or him and Fido will be whimperIng on the street . ..or you could kindly send him an email bake him some fresh sugar cookies and ask him if he was willing to compromise with just 3 pit bulls in the house

Note we understand that Gladstone has an registration and inspection, so does Independence and we learned today that Grandview has had one since 2009 that they have not enforced and they are having a meeting to improve it, and to create HUGE fines to enforce it.

1) How confident are you on those rents?

You need boots on the ground to drive by a property and see if the street and block is ready for improvement.

The biggest advantage in paying these off will be improving your debt to income ratio. 

If it's going to help you gain the confidence of friends and family so that you can scale, great.

With limited time I only work for people Im 100% confident Im closing a deal with.

I was researching how to calculate depreciation on my first duplex that I bought and I was browsing through the county assessor website and noticed that my land value is $250k and the improvement value is $28k.

First of all great work and much respect trying to improve yourself.