., exclude it from your 1031 Exchange) and you would pay tax ONLY on the amount that you pull out. 

Having a better understanding of the problem(s) makes finding a solution much more likely.

For the house you're looking at, you can ask a real estate agent to pull historical comps for each year and look at those to understand the true appreciation of the neighborhood/house.

And of course, a contractor who can pull it all together.Good luck!

We went to look at it toward the middle of March 2015 and there were holes in walls, missing fixtures, odd electrical (the wiring for the back porch light and exterior outlet have been pulled into the master bedroom), tiles missing in the master shower (green plastic was duck taped across 2/3 of the surround so they could use it anyway), and cabinets missing that were not that way in November when it was listed with our Realtor.

At least then I still have control over pulling my capital out if I don't like the performance.  

Hopefully Simon W. has a solution.

Thank you Kim, this sounds like the solution I need.

@Jessica Chow Congrats on the rental, pulling the trigger on the first one is challenging.Do you have an estoppel agreement from the tenant and have you compared that to the lease provided by the current owner along with whatever background info they collected from the application?

From there if you are Brrring you can do the work on the home (using the HELOC) and once work is done you could do a 'refinance' on the home as a conventional with 20% and pull out the remaining cash which is then used to pay off the HELOC you used to get into the property.Once again this is tact I have read up on but have not personally utilized yet.