Over improvement not only costs you money up front, it increases your long term maintenance and repair costs.

The Friday breakfast is a popular one but there are others as well.   

Look to ensure that its value would increase by lots more than the cost of fixing it!

I had them do this retroactively on a tenant increasing her portion $150 / month.  

An umbrella policy does not cover anything special, it only increases the amount that will be paid out in the event of a liability claim. 

Whoever you talked to at the HOA might have had an agenda or may have given you bad info so I would double check.Offering seller financing may help by increasing your pool of buyers.

This scenario is the mostly even benefit scenario as the tenant leveraged their increased rent to make the purchase. 

As of late, I have became interested in real estate and purchasing the home for the need of a tax shelter and increase my networth.My parent's house at the moment is valued at $500,000.

You'll have very quickly increased your net by 45K against 10K start...it's just not very liquid is it.I'll stop there because I just looked at page 2, now your property value estimates are VERY NICE.

You will lose money one way or another on those appliances I can assure you so you need to have the tenant paying extra in the form of coin operated machines or increased rent