You can improve it.

The reason behind this is so all of the neighbors can see that you're working on your outside and people will start buying things and improving their own properties.

Lucky for us, the market continued to improve over the years...we sold it the 2nd time for $143,500.Add up the costs, and the sleepless nights, and we still did pretty well.True Story and My First Deal  and a big education - I never stopped!

One of my first (of many) concerns will be to not overdo improvements, being as I tend toward, but am not a full blown perfectionist.I'm sure I'll have more specific questions as I go, but for now I'm just schooling myself on the basics here at BP!

If they have a smart phone take a video and photograph of the status and the repair, just in case have a record of your attempt to improve conditions. 

Do the interviews, and find out what you need/want versus what is provided.

Big improvements.

Just as an example on one of them...they way over improved the property for the price point, and they also did not factor in the fact that this property did not have a yard...and Frederick is a very dog friendly city...so not having that yard really brought down the value.

In my previous situation, we built bridges, small health clinics, and schools from ground up, currently we do tenant improvements, so still, even with my construction experience previously, there is still a transition/learning curve.

@Nate Burnett It would be interesting to see if the light rails actually improved property values.