However painting and property improvements would be added to your cost basis.

You are required to apply depreciation and capitalize repairs, if you didn't pay for the costs, and report the costs or don't report the costs, it's a false return, if you claim the costs of repairs or improvements, and didn't pay that cost, it's fraud!

While my current financial situation is improving, I do not currently have the ability to jump on a deal should I find one.After explaining my plan to a close friend who also lives in the Chicagoland area, he told me he is interested as well and has up to $40K to invest.

Prudential regulatory standards for non-bank mortgage servicing companies would help achieve the following goals:  Provide better protection for borrowers, investors, and other stakeholders in the occurrence of a stress event;  Enhance effective regulatory oversight and market discipline over these entities; and  Improve transparency, accountability, risk management, and corporate governance standards.

He also has a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/HughZWealth .Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-Empire-Ventur...Raleigh information:https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?

Given that she has already said that, I will go a slightly different direction:What did you do on your last deal that could be substantially improved? 

You can Join your local REIA, Network, Joint Venture with others, If you know family & friends willing to use some of their IRA/401K.You've mentioned "reading" peoples post have you listened to the Podcasts here..they cover everything about REI and they last about 1 hour give or take a few minutes.For your personal life I would urge you to pursue improving your credit.

Once you are more comfortable flipping and have a good team in place (i.e. contractors, realtors, lawyers, etc.) and your speed and predictability improves, then I would start using leverage to scale up your business.

Do you plan on making significant improvements to the structure/units?  

. , I had a similar issue on a 100 years old house too.in my case i resolved by improving a badly designed/implemented gutter system (all the rain water was just dumping over the walls, soaking into them then getting into the basement) and diverting that water away from the house. 2xprimer + 2x good paint.maybe this is the case here.if you don't want the hassle of getting rid of the existing tenants, vacancy and finding other (hopefully) better suited tenants, maybe first you can just paint the place inside and outside and resolve any safety issues (rails). what did you repair to the place?