If you talk to a planner for the city, or the person in charge of the tax sale, they tend to know if there are any environmental concerns and in my experience, are very useful resources to find out the history of the property.

You may not want to wait the 4-5+ years for the market to get you to where you want to be.To tie my point in, people tend not to over pay in the investor market. 4plexs are classified as residential properties and have to be evaluated as such using the comparable approach  it is what it is. 

And actually I now tend to just take care of these things right away because its such a pain to deal with unplanned issues with things, especially furnaces.

I've found that duplexes in LA tend to be priced more like single family homes than income properties.

Or about $200-225 per fixture.Typical cost for the same think in Milwaukee tended to be about $4000-6000. 

I've thought about the potential issues with showing property especially after reading that real estate agents (women in particular) have been targeting on showings.

"In addition, the trial court noted several other aggravating factors, including Bigelow's failure to successfully complete probation, his pattern of physical abuse toward women, his history of substance abuse, evidence of multiple instances of molestation toward the victim, and his violation of a position of trust."  

I tend to avoid real estate agents as much as possible, as I purchase property directly from its owners in cash transactions, doing my own due diligence. 

That size of house would dictate a family would tend to live there with kids.

Kind of a simple motivational statement, but it made me realize how often I tend to think of why things won't work instead of figuring out ways to make them work.