My second thought is to do a separate refinance (no cash out), to a 30 year loan, lowering my monthly costs and increasing my cash flow. 

So if your plan has a high probability of success all the way out to age 100, then the probability only increases if you only live to 85 or 90.Also, with younger clients, I tell them to plan as if Social Security will not be there for them at all (note: I do believe it will be around for a long time, though it will likely look different 30 years from now than it does today, which may mean decreased benefits versus what you could expect if you retired tomorrow), and build a successful plan that way.

No increase in rent or change in lease or signed statement was imposed, just written text message communication. 

I would only consider doing this if rent increased to at least the market amount post renovation.  

I put them out day one and keep them out until they are rented or sold.I generally see an increase in traffic while it's up and I do receive phone calls looking for other properties, so it's working in some way. 

@Eric Armstrong knows Pike Creek better than me, so he can chime in otherwise...but by and large you're going to be looking at $150 more from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom, and then the same increase from 2 bedroom to 3 bedroom, and the same again from 3 bedroom to 4 bedroom ...beyond 4 bedrooms it starts to drop off a bit. 

.; he provides seller’s reports so I can better analyze the deal; if something looks good, I get my contractor involved and we all talk about it.My agent and I also have an understanding that I need to network with other agents to increase my deal potential, he gets that.

I try to pick up a rental every year or two with conventional loan and then rehab it to increase rents.

I checked on my neighbors land vs improvement value and generally it seems like their improvement value is higher than their land value.I haven’t called the assessors office to dispute that because I want to know what makes more sense: to depreciate more on my taxes or to increase my property tax bill.If I understand correctly, depreciation is roughly improvement  / land value * purchase price?

Ask for the cost difference on the added liability coverage - generally it is not that much to increase this limit.