If I'm unable to get the assessment changed, I'm going to have to find some creative ways to put the buck back on the tenants with the next lease. 

Do you really want to be a property manager to make like 50 bucks a month?

If this is truly what you expect for sales prices i would say consider to sell and take your profits to a market where you get more bang for your buck.

With both units rented you’ll have a few hundred bucks in positive cash flow.

The good news is, we're talking about what, a couple hundred bucks? 

They may charge you 25 bucks or so for a copy.  

Like everyone commented, you don't want a war zone as your first property but there are plenty of deals out there in mature neighborhoods where houses have just not been kept up. 

For the few hundred bucks it would cost you to make a trip, I don't know why you wouldn't. 

We insure a few hundred homes at anyone time and have a Proctor account.. its like a zuriich.. and so we can add one day and subtract one day and we pay a monthly rate.. so on some of these cheaper mid west homes we may pay 20 to 30 a month but if the property is off the books in 90 days its only 90 bucks.. and they bill once a month in a rears.. though with that we have a 5k deductible.. which hurts on wind/hail damage for roof replacements.. and it takes for ever to get a claim through they will come through but you need to have the money to do the fix up while the claim is being processed.

Some of them have an option to extend the loan at maturity for another round of points.