They start coming out in the spring when there is a huge push for home improvement.  

Lots of rough areas but lately getting an infusion of improvement.

House hack a  4 plex, improve credit score to 700, triple my income from last yearProgress towards this goal:Working on increasing my income from my career in real estate and also doing some credit repair this will help me more so for the upcoming years and help gain some credibility with lenders.

I've used it before and from what others have told me it's improved over the years.

The seller has made no improvements, rents out the properties for below market rates and does virtually no marketing. 

There is some minor improvement in the labor force participation rate, but not enough to save all this. 

A good tool to utilize is excel, you can evaluate a cash flow in minutes.Monthly payment is =PMT(intrate,term,principle) it would look like=PMT(5%/12,180,100000) This is $100,000 at 5% term of 15 years.Then place your estimated occupancy rate, insurance, taxes, an allotment for improvements down the road into a pivot table to automatically subtract.

Changing the carpet out of the years is cosmetic repair/improvement and not required to bring it up to current codes.

Once I own the property, the focus is on what can I do to improve the cash flow from the property?  

I recommend: pass, until your own funding availability is much improved.