I am not talking by a few thousand.  

 Hello,I have 3 single family rental homes aprox net value after RE commissions-Closing costs for the total ($560,0000-580,000). these 3 are all paid off. 

Tens of thousands of people have tried to defend themselves in tax court for their REPS who have had full time jobs. 3 have successfully defended themselves. 3, thats it. 

Your pm should have hundreds if not thousands of properties under management.  2) Make sure your insurance is valid on a property that’s been vacant 6 months, many policies don’t cover properties empty that long. 3) You could have lowered the rent to $1,200/mo after the first month’s vacancy and been way ahead.

Well it seems like you could just let them out of the lease, but then you have turnover costs, including time on market to find a new renter- meaning you're going to absorb loss is possibly because of this.

That being said, they are extremely costly and expensive and generally do not make sense for smaller transactions. 

Find architects or designers, engineers of all types, general contractor, etc. to design the project, and know how to keep the design where it's functional, cost effective, but has appeal.

There exist several distressed apartments buildings in downtown Lisbon (1-6 units) from 300-500k needing refurbishment with an average refurbishment cost of 20-30k max per building.

I utilized a HomeStyle Renovation Loan, a conventional loan that enabled me to finance the cost of the rehab.

Most very talented CPAs can/will advise you on tax strategy for a fraction of the cost..