I have had some formal training in money markets and one thing they pushed was protecting your capital with risk management.

The house from the pictures looks really washed out an sterile.

If the floor is spongy and wet after a leak, it is not going to dry on its own.The PM’s most recent action is to turn the keys to the property back over and wash their hands of it.

My dilemma is that I havent fixed on a strategy yet and am between pushing my budget to the 250-300 area and buying something that will hopefully appreciate (which based on my perception of Birmingham macro economics isn't sustainable) vs buying something more on the 100-150 range that I can perhaps rent out later on down the line when I become more comfortable with the market and / or there is a correction and prices come down, thus allowing me to move into something larger... any insight into the local view on the Birmingham market would be appreciated.Thank you

There is a minor stink but we haven't washed down the walls yet.

I would pressure wash all the concrete sidewalks & walkways.

From there it is up to you to keep pushing forward and making contacts in your new career to advance your own dream.At the end of the day you can relate this seminar business to a new gym membership.

If I can help it,I only buy units with all utilities paid by tenants.When I started out,I got an older duplex with a shared meter.Have not repeated the mistake since then.6 months ago,water bill at that unit jumped from 45$ to 2000$-in one month.Then it stayed that way for three billing cycles before I caught on to it.Turns out the neighbor had connected a hose pipe to the backyard pipe while tenant was away and started running a car wash on my dime.When informed,tenant was essentially nonplussed.Not her business.

Since you are already involved in a court case and have a hearing date in December, I would push it to the wall and see what happens on that date.If you win, it probably is not collectible but at least you know you were right.

New ways to quantify what was once considered purely qualitative data now means new ways to analyze what data washes up onto our hard drives and into our cloud storage centers.