Labor and materials go up. 

In your experiences, did you find a default set of updates that you like to do with all your properties, such as a certain look or material in your kitchen?

Wood or is vinyl the original material?

But if you need to rent one and document results.You might look into some sound dampening material as well.Before doing all of this, in a non threatening way, best you can - try to develop a relationship with the neighbor so that you don't have to go down the civil adversarial road.....

You can get material to soften the sound of footsteps as well underneath it.Those stores you mentioned should be able to do the job for you

In addition to quality of materials, you want to appeal to the largest group of people possible. 

I had the trenching done by unskilled labor the drains were covered in a mesh material that I bought at Home Depot.

Still doesn’t add up to me so I’m going to hafta try and find out what really happened to all the money by getting contractor to send me invoices and receipts for material and try to reconcile that to bank account statements.  

It's hard to beat much of the free material on this website and the books published by Bigger Pockets for that introductory glimpse.

I am looking for any recommendations for a general contractor that I can use on all my future jobs that is reliable and investor friendly when it comes to materials and cost.