Could he have spent that much, yeah, but it sounds like he over-improved the property and may have a hard time selling a home for $250,000+ in a neighborhood where a house can be purchased for $40K to $90K

I agree that you should hold off on improvements until you have owned the property for a while.

We would like to improve our deal flow so that we can consistently close 2 deals per month.

I have a Chase Ink card that gives me 3% cash back at home improvement stores (plus gas stations, restaurants, and office supply stores).....unfortunately I was just looking at their site and the new Ink cards have different categories than mine.

In 30 days they were able to improve their score to 600 and get a better rate on their loan.

I literally had less than $1k maintenance/improvements in 4 years.

Constant improvement is the name of the game with conversions. 

If the wrong people are showing up you have some work to do on your system.A huge shift that transformed my bank account was learning these 3 marketing principles:1) Right Person2) Right Message3) Right TimeI am far from being a marketing expert, but I am learning quickly & constantly improving my skills.Once I became a serious student of marketing & discarded everything I thought I knew about real estate, things started to change for the better.

Examples include unnecessary improvements, preferred vendors not lowest bid and inability to pursue delinquencies/ late fees if present from other owners who are friends of PM.

If the HOA is well run they serve a purpose, the people who complain the most usually never attend a meeting in order to change things for the better, or they could run for office to see if they could improve the community.