Both of these led to a lot of money lost.

@Dawn Anastasi  SCAM is my first thought if they do surface next thing you know is they don't want to go through escrow and give you a quit claim deed and you just lost your money.. but I know your much to experienced for that to happen.I thought in WI you needed a RE licnese to sell even your own property..

Finally I was ready to put an offer on this home when to our surprise the listing agent had lost the home to Auction.com.

SO I lost the second house- its under contract.

We were in contract, but found PERC so we dropped the deal, and lost our deposit and the due diligence fees.

At the end of five years, Collin's $10,000 has lost 40% of it's value (depreciation) and is now only worth $6,000 (car's equity).

I lost good quality tenants because the unit was not show ready.If you are certain of your turnover time, you could start marketing it around the time your current tenant are leaving, setting up any showings for after the unit turnover.As for you timing issue, I also disagree.  

The $20,000 would be immediate equity but you would have lost that cash.

So nothing is actually lost there to the buyer agent.

Now if you split off that unit for a whole lot of money he will be billing you back for the time lost due to construction going on.