When anybody first starts out on their real estate adventure, there is the tendency to want to do the very best that you can to make your rental properties the very best that they can possibly be. This way (or so the theory goes), you can attract the best possible tenants. After all, there are three major ways to get tenants. You can underprice the competition, provide something superior to the competition, or just have a terribly lopsided demand to supply ratio in your favor (and most of the landlords of the world are just not lucky enough have such a preferential situation happen to them).
Of course, as time goes on, it can also be tempting to think that as long as you can make some money at it and the local government is not going to give you any static about it, you can get away with just about anything that you want to do. In cases such as that, you start to wonder if you can just put thick plexiglass over the windows, so that passing crack addicts do not bust in there and try to steal your pipes (as if anybody still puts copper pipes into a rental in anything but a great neighborhood).
The balance that you are going to have to strike when you realize that no tenant will keep your property the way you would (and that the neighborhood down there is not the same as the neighborhood that you live in) is between keeping it good enough that the good, paying, employed tenants would want to live there, while not trying to make a hood into a suburb through endless, fruitless cash infusions and work which either be ignored or stolen. While having little accents is great, and having a nice rental is also great, there is a point where it gets to be a bit ridiculous.