This is an option I look at when carrying two mortgage.

Either have quality from afar or run a more problem property locally for increased cash flow yield.Constant traveling far away to a lower class asset on continual basis will suck away a lot of your time and cash and you have to build that in to see if the extra risk is worth it for the upside.Investors like to keep problem properties close to home and re-cycle capital.

Just be aware that every extra daisy in the daisy-chain means: less profit to go around.

On the other hand, drain pipes only carry water when the water is turned on at the faucet level, so since the water wasn't being used the evidence you saw of a leak was dry. 

Never know, they might not do much but might give you an extra 500$ toward that problem.

I am also from San Diego and would love to go back a few years and buy some extra properties.  

ie. extra cash out means no hole!

I mean, if you dig and soils on the level of the floor will support itself, then the caissons are much more smaller (if not totally out of the picture) because it needs to carry less load, but that means you will need to spend for the basement -- is it a selling price increase?

He will hopefully have extra equity built in to the deal but the difference between a $30k and $40k house market wise may not be anything.

After all of those expense, it still needs to be cash flowing.So in all, I carry a fixed 38.3% fixed expense cost of gross rents for the building.