@Jeremy Sharp first time I looked at doing this I paid the agent I use a few hundred bucks to help me put the offer together and send it over.

Don’t spend 300 +grand on a house that puts 100-150 bucks in your pocket each month and then get on here patting your self on the back that you know it will appreciate and someday be worth over 400 grand because you live in Dallas / Phoenix/los Angeles etc.,.

In order to get the best bang for the buck for rental income, what would you do?

The loan due date (maturity) hasn't been missed, and the mortgage payments are all in good standing. 

This is a duplex with the asking being 178,000, annual taxes are 1494, insurance should be about 100 bucks a month, PMI should be about another 108 dollars a month.

Where is the biggest bang for the buck for someone like me?  

If your house is worth 500k, and the improvements on it are worth 350k, you can depreciate it about 3%/year, you get to deduct 10k from your income this year. at a 25% tax rate you've saved yourself 2500 bucks. 1031's cost about 1500 bucks.

I agree with Chris, much better to spend the ninety bucks on an O&E report to leverage your time.

Need a bridge loan (6 or 12 mo) on 4 unit rehab that is maturing. 1 month from completion. 

by the boat load. you can get a 10k credit card judgement that is a few years old and the credit card company deems it uncollectable and they will sell it for 50 to 100 bucks.. then their business model is to track these and at about 9.5 years by the time the debtor thinks they are home free .. they go into skip tracing mode figure out where they work and bank if they can and garnish them and take all the money out of their accounts..