My best advice, make sure you are evaluating the primary residence as an "investment property" from the get go.  

I'm not a paying member (I will be once I have completed my first deal) so I can't put the link for the BP calculator but I'll spell out the information in this post.  I hadn't really planned on starting with somethin...

Anytime I find a highly motivated seller, I evaluate the deal to see if I can make any $ with it.

I don't buy anything unless I know I can increase the value by addressing the property's deferred maintenance, or updating the apartments or solving the property's financial underperformance (or all of the above).I created a tool that allows me to evaluate a deal in 5 minutes or less.

@Frank Rossi It's very important to have your expenses will documented, you will also have to request the to be forgiven and the banker will evaluate your support and confirm if it meets the expenditure and support requirements. 

We brought our best contractor in to evaluate the issue and he found galvanized plumbing throughout the building cracking.

I know Virginia has lucrative historic tax credits...this might be a property to evaluate (appears pretty old aka historic).

There's no cash outlay so how can you evaluate as cash/cash?

Its value is often tied into single-family values in the area and block values that haven nothing to do with how larger properties are evaluated.

The one certainty I can tell you is that all my clients evaluate purchases in their own way.