You can have the sewer lines and furnace inspected without power.

I'm not an experienced REI yet but I would like to offer advice on the power of positive thinking.Everything happens for a reason.Reading your post...the biggest thing that jumped out at me "my private money (dad)" is an AMAZING thing in my opinion.

the 2nd association it resonates is the highly consumption-driven society we live in. in my area (coastal, urban southern california) i'm surrounded by 2 distinct lifestyles. there's the majority: seems like 95% of the local population who are renters, driving luxury cars, sporting fancy clothes, jewelry, hairdos, etc but obviously living paycheck to paycheck as exemplified by hardly a day somebody or the other is spotted  getting their car repo'ed by a camera crew. the rarer are the landlords, who in this area seem to be of mostly asian demographics (chinese, koreans, japanese) who live obviously very frugally: old 80s model sedan, oldfashion business cloths, always eating simple meal from home, seemingly never splurging $$$ other than into expanding their portfolio), my observance is relatively very few landlords in the area own relatively huge portfolios, each.with the advent of these infomercials and the internet (ie, BP) more and more people want to get a 'piece of the REI pie' and more power to them. there does seem to be this dream of rags to riches and while its ok to dream, do most people actually expect their life to turn around like that, as portrayed in most of the infomercials or even in the everyday setting where the masses living paycheck to paycheck, are spending their last expendable dollars not on depositing into savings acount, but blowing $20 on scratchies etc. in summary, is my observation reminds me of my days when i worked on wall st and the 'ra trace' was so obvious with dime a dozen stock brokers makin 6fig salaries at some point but blowing it on recreational drugs apparently costing thousands of dollars a pop to the point the next week they are broke again and that $ wasnt invested but wasted.  

For the KC properties they may not have the holding power that the property here will, but if your goal is cashflow then that's what I would pursue.

We strive to make things as clean as possible.Today and tomorrow our landscaper and do everything guy will be at the house doing a number of things including: power washing concrete areas that need it, installing like fixtures, putting mulch beds down, and patching concrete where needed on the front patio.

By cutting my down payment requirements in half from the 30% I had been paying to 15% it would seem that my buying power has just doubled.

Advising tenants to keep faucets on a slow drip overnight if temps get very cold is a good idea, and opening up cabinet doors to let the heat circulate to pipes can help as well.One thing to think about with winterizing is that it really is a pretty simple process, but will help you avoid water damage to vacant properties...even if you intend to keep the heat on, a winter storm with high winds or heavy snowfall can knock out the power and then you end up with NO heat at all.

It is a very operational business, and we are not setup to run that efficiently man-power-wise. 

But somebody)Your house's roof and exterior walls could all be made of this:Solar power and technology on your **roof** could be SO 2015 by 2035.  

It looked like they had a very efficient setup, combination erector set / ikea.Most/all of the core connections for power, water, waste, etc routed through a floor/ceiling section with all the walls and other fixtures loaded on top so they could transport two full sections per truckload.Another interesting factoid sheet:http://www.constructionglobal.com/majorprojects/79...