Unfortunately I own the house already so what is my alternative or a plan of action that would minimize risk of either prolonged vacancy or renting it out to a person just  for them to default shortly after and not being able to evict especially during a pandemic in a tenant friendly city.

The house is brick and stucco and lead is only on wooden trims- porch column, patio roof siding, soffits, and fascias.Is there an alternative strategy to give this home a face-lift without spending tremendous amount of money on the exterior?

Roofstock is an alternative marketplace to the MLS.

Alternatively, you go to a bank and give the lender an assignment of collateral against the policy's cash value.5.

As an alternative to his strategy, you could do a 1031 exchange into a larger property every 2-5 years to increase your number of units that way.Hope this helps.

A $7k "repair" write off item might work out to alternatively $1k of "depreciation" write off every year for the next 7 years (still $7k...) -- different things have different depreciation schedules.

What’s the alternative?

At this rate of 1-2 purchases per year I’ll need about 20 homes and alternative financing because I’ll be maxed out on loans.

I don't have any data to offer from an appraisal perspective, but just practically speaking, it seems like an actual gas furnace alternative would be a bigger selling point than a fireplace that just sits in the corner and looks nice.

This was only possible via intimately knowing that market and the alternative use of the property, expanding and adding a huge primary suite, because I knew exactly who my buyer was going to be to the point I was targeting white collar professional mid-manager at Best Buy headquarters, yeah that's how well I knew my market.