If they focus on making quality material and present well people will naturally come up to them at the end of the presentation.No hard selling needed or wanted.I attended a Jeffrey Gitomer seminar a long time ago before he was big.It was at the wold pizza expo in Las Vegas when I used to own a restaurant.

What about property management, investment property specialty, short sales/REOs, creative skills applied to web site design for brokerages, wow them with your sample marketing materials?

Material + Install and for how many linear feet?

Your mortgage will remain constant but taxes and insurance increase and labor rates, materials and supplies will probably double.

There was water damage and the carpet was removed and mildew on the walls so the bottom portion of two walls was also removed.Since there is no closet and window it can only be utilized as storage.

Its an issue of materiality more than anything else and you will need to have a written policy in place that you follow.If you have one property and collect $400/mo in rent and purchase 5 tools in one year for $100/ea will be far more material than if you had a 100 unit apartment collecting on average $650/unit and spent the same amount.There are few hard and fast rules here though the temporary regs passed in December will change some of this on your 2012 tax returns.

I'm curious how different people analyze and budget repairs to HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems in bank owned homes where the utilities are turned off?

I think you lost me in all of your paragraphs.What are the following numbers:In Place Rent:Existing Debt Service:Existing Peripherals (Taxes, Insurance, Association,Maintenance, Utilities):Property Tax Rate:Also... when you say you "put a ton of money into it"...

debt service isn't included in the 50%...that's reserved for taxes, insurance, management, vacancies, repairs, maintenance, utilities, trashouts, cap ex..etc.....

In the future she plans to either move to the US (there are a number of ways) or just visit me from time to time and stay for a few months in the US.She wants to take advantage of our low housing prices, purchase a house, rent it out (rental income is not that important to her but it would be nice if it at least covered expenses on property tax, utilities etc.).Off course, she is going to pay cash, and I am ready to help her as much as I can.