It is a fixer upper and banks don't want to do the financing so I'm trying all possible ways to make this deal go through.

The aforementioned book is a good start to get your estimating legs.  

And it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg either.

Where there is low inventory, as we have here now, then the value of any staging is minimized because the houses are already selling quickly and at the upper limits of their value.  

Upper Lawrenceville, hvac, electric, plumbing

Hey everyone. I closed on my first deal back in July (house-hacking) with an FHA loan and have been improving the property while living in it. My goal this year is to buy another multi-unit (2-4 units) in my city, but...

Then have my gf purchase the next MFH or fixer upper with an FHA loan.

Hell I took a course in college that included two textbooks just on Prop 13 (out of 5 for the semester long course, and this was NOT a real estate or finance course), but I still couldn't even calculate simple interest until I entered my current profession, and at no point did that upper division UC Berkeley course include a "practical application" example of the implications of Prop 13.Up until I made "this is Prop 13" a standard part of my 45 minute FTHB "how to adult" thing, I was still getting people once in a while that would say one house is better than another because they pulled the tax bill and it was lower.

I was just informed that the insurance for one duplex (with an outside stairway to the upper) will cost as much as two other mixed residential/commercial properties combined.  

I always found the latter less visully appealing  than the upper “Latin” towns of Union City, North Bergen and West New York, though my opinion appears to be in the minority.