As a real estate agent, I can tell you in my market about half the agents are going to tell you what they think you want to hear, a quarter don't know what they're doing, and a quarter will actually take the time and do as good of a valuation as they can, but again it is ultimately an opinion of value.

Very good choice.  

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out the The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing and The BiggerPockets Podcast.

It's a tough choice... in order to get the egg.... you gotta feed the chicken... and take care of it.  

I'm aggressively listening to the BP Podcast & taking notes & I'm also reading BP's "The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Real Estate Investing".

Contractors are tougher now than a few years ago when the market was soft and even the great contractors were in need of work...These days, you have two choices -- find perfect contractors and let them run with the project, or find not-so-perfect contractors and manage them closely. 

I think having the freedom to make those choices is many investors end goals or at least one of them. 

Isn't usually worth it.if the property is held in a trust, then the choices are pretty clear cut.  

They don't want to chance loosing that and understand that if they get evicted, it can have jeopardize their ability to continue on the Housing Choice Voucher program.Even though we have chosen to target only C+ and better neighborhoods for buy & hold, we've already made the decision to accept Sec 8.  

So with each component taken as a whole it ultimately impacts cash flow and how the deal is structured.