Great perspective Wes, enjoyed the post.You mentioned the price to purchase one home: California's Median Home Price: $490,100Kansas City, MO's Median Home Price: $118,400but you didn't mention investing the same amount of money.  

You've listed a few options and she's nixed one so get her perspective on what she would embrace. 

Now, I'm sure a lot of it is perspective, miscommunication, misunderstanding, and differing goals and expectations for the area on all sides.

It's great they're always working to improve the site and keep things fresh, which makes it THE BEST real estate investing site in the world! 

That person might share ideas/different perspective based on another thread.

However, I stumbled on an excellent article outlining these requirements from a tax code and tax court perspective (http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2014/07/09/tax-geek-tuesday-the-irs-finally-figures-out-the-real-estate-professional-rules/#699c23d84760) and it has led to a question or series of questions that I would like to pose to the community as I want this to be airtight.

Our perspective is that the extent of the renovation and the "distress" of the property is all relative to our pro-forma of the property, regardless of if it's a flip or buy-n-hold.  

From the noobie perspective, it sounds like HML's are the way to go when PML's can't get the job done (because of too much risk or otherwise).

The inflation rate will benefit you from a resale price perspective.

Brian, I am neither of the ones you addressed this to however I read there responses and want to add the following: Everyone is answering from their own perspective.