My current business runs smoothly and is very predictable because of the years I've spent refining it.  

So predicting your needs down the road is a crap-shoot. 

You can though find 30k homes in little towns scattered throughout the US... challenges there will be minimum wage renters and no hope of type of appreciation.. which even in the major metro areas there is little appreciation to speak of simply because were your going to buy is dominated by rentals and investors only pay by return on investment.. to get appreciation you would need major moves in rent rates and that just has not happened .. rents have stayed pretty stagnate in most of those areas and are not predicted to go up.. you go up above the current rent rates.. and folks are going to buy homes at least your premium tenants.. you will always in those markets have your lifelong tenant

Downtown LA is expected to grow rapidly as it has been, predicted 7-10% rise in value by next year.

Arnie,  What you are proposing is called "predictive maintenance". 

I don't believe that I'm smart enough to predict a real estate downturn or upturn, not even in my own market of Denver, CO, much less the rest of the U.S.

Would be interested to hear what the experts think of each of these: (1) what's the best way to accurately estimate cap ex/repairs so you can figure out if a deal warrants making an offer in the first place, and (2) any reason to think past financials do not reasonably well predict future costs?

so is there anyway to predict what would be the taxes?

HI Ken,The primary you can go up to 85-90% LTV of the current appraisal value with interest only payments on a HELOC.The rental's you can get HELOC's as well but only from local community, commercial, or credit unions like penfed.org up to 70-80% LTV around mid 5's.You never go to big banks to ask them about HELOC's as the answer is predictably, NO.HELOC is great if you're going to draw money out and replace it relatively quickly since you only pay interest when the funds are being used.

Minus a global economic collapse that none of us can predict, I don't see this market changing.