Hopefully the decisions we make today are reflective of what happened last time.

There's no free lunch with rehabbing -- you can choose any finishes, design decisions or level of quality you want, but the ARV will reflect those decisions.As for where to cut? 

Then ADD 1.75% to the loan amount and your loan is based at 98.25% plus monthly MI (so even though you've put down 3.5%, your loan amount will only reflect a 1.75% down payment because of the FINANCED upfront MIP. 

The contract needs to reflect that.For example we have a contract for short, long term rentals.

In order to compensate for this, I needed a near real time datapoint that reflects an aspect of our local housing market.

It's not the best area of town, but the individual unit rental prices reflect that.

It will certainly reflect in my offer (pending a thorough inspection).

Also, the investor's offer usually reflects his inspection of the property.

The data also reflected almost no movement in or out of Illinois for anyone under an income level of $49,000.

As it stands right now, as long as I am keeping it as a rental it will stay as-is as any cost would not be reflected much in any gain in rent.