We're also trying to get new windows installed immediately, which should significantly decrease their electric bill.

While you might not increase your rental price, you will decrease vacancy and get it rented much quicker!!    

I never finished the licensing process, so my license is not "active", (too much CE that i personally found irrelevant) but I kept my relationship with a broker who I split the "commission" with if the selling agent insists, and most agents are willing to decrease the commissions for investor agents.

If you can increase NOI by increasing income or decreasing expenses, there is the value add in the investment.You can use various calculators to calculate cash on cash, cap rate and debt coverage ratio.  

And then there's this: Calculated Risk blog (Great on housing and the economy) reported on the MBA's Index of home purchase mortgages; it's at 1998 levels- http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/04/mba-mortgage-applications-decrease-in_30.html Good hunting-

Each of these properties has had regular price decreases, so needles to say my curiosity is piqued.

I luckily have a job where I can decrease the amount of hours I work to my own needs.

If in city limits you will have city and county taxes.Make sure that the property you are considering buying does not have a senior exemption making taxes low or that they won an appeal that is fixing to go back up.Look for special assessments and for the city and county what the mill rate has been trending at (going up, staying flat, or decreasing and by how much each month as a percentage).The assessors could have been using low values as well the last few years but with things rising in many markets they will want to reassess to get more money flowing into the county and city coffers.Usually you can look up to sometimes 5 to 10 years worth of bills and assessments online with the county and city tax assessor websites if they are urban and suburban.If it is rural they might not have that info online.

@Renee Zhang You should not decrease it.  

If something seems close and I think I can increase rent/decrease property cost, then I'll give it more attention with running the numbers.