Wholesale. Fix n Flip, or Buy & Hold... What Would You Do?

[Nikki Robinson]

Hi! I'm a newbie investor and just spoke with my first lead from a yellow letter campaign.

The property is a 3bd/2ba brick house, 2035 sq ft including the attached 2 car garage. It has a 3 acre yard but sits on 24 acres altogether. The seller - who lives in the Florida Keys - is protector of her father's estate; he has dementia.

Seller had the trees on the undeveloped 21 acres appraised and a local lumber company offered $30K for them. She included that info as she described the property's features, which include a stocked fishing pond on the land and plenty game for hunting.

She also detailed repairs that the house would need, which I've roughly estimated to be around $43K. I used to work at Lowe's so I remember the cost of several materials & appliances. The rest is conservative estimates for labor.

I'll be following up with the seller this week. During our first conversation, she told me that there's mold in the crawlspace under the house. She said she'd ordered a test kit to see if it was black mold or not. We're waiting on those results because it will make a big difference if the house has black mold.

The $43K repair estimate does NOT include black mold removal if the test comes back positive for black mold.

She said she had the property appraised as-is at $252K. I'm thinking it's value is more around $215K based on average home values per sq. ft in my small town & similar properties sold recently. I haven't gotten any precise comps from a realtor yet.

My main question with this post is what would you do with this property: wholesale, fix n flip, or buy & hold?

My second question is, how do I approach a property attached to such a large plot of land? It has a 3 acre lawn and another surrounding 21 acres (currently used for hunting and fishing). Would you try to get it all under contract or just the house & 3 acre lawn? 

Any and all input is welcome. :)