I went to http://property.phila.gov/This website shows the Market Value, Taxable Land, and Taxable improvement.

Put it in this post and ask people to improve it.  

In addition, I now still have a good sum of cash left over for capital improvements and, ultimately, a second property should I choose to do so.That's been my experience. 

There's just more gain to be made by either buying more properties or improving the ones you have so they pull higher rents.

I could make this really "smart" and more complex by factoring in additional variables into my formula, like current vs. effective age (if I make a repair the lifespan of the appliance will be increased), time value of money, efficiency of newer appliances vs. old ones, etc. however my goal wasn't to get overly complex, and just make a simple formula to make better data-driven decisions on this semi-frequent occurrence.To use the formula, you would just enter/change the values highlighted in yellow on the spreadsheet and the rest will auto-calculate.If you spot a simple way to improve the formula or think I forgot about something, please let me know and I'd be happy to improve the formula.

The loose wording stems from my loose and changing feelings about it.The rest of the advice I'm really digging.Thanks again for taking the time to evaluate and offer improvements on my approach!

-Real Estate Investing for Dummies -How to Start Real Estate Investing - Robert Irwin -The millionaire next store - stanley thomas -retire young retire rich - robert kyosaki -The millionaire real estate investor - Gary Kellar please helpI would read "retire young, retire rich" by Robert Kyosaki and then try to apply one principal from the book.I just finished reading "Multi-Family Millions" by Dave Lindahl and applied 2 concepts and it really helped improve my real estate business.I think Jon has a good point -- read them all.. and get a few tidbits and then apply them.best to you in your learning.

Make sure you still can improve or build on the property etc. 

Looking for any advise on how to improve value.

We did that on note in Oregon last year that worked out well.If you work with a servicer that reports to the credit bureaus then you can help the buyer/payor either establish credit or improve their credit with timely payments.