As for cash, I'm a fan of lean budgets for maximum savings every month, because it will help you reach financial independence that much faster.

After learning about the BRRRR strategy, I'm a fan of that personally. 

I called for a second opinion, they cleaned the coils and adjusted the fan speed and it works as good as new.

If something else, exchange engineering for business administration or something else that you can apply more directly to real estate.Just my two cents, hope no one else here take it personally regarding their education background and the fan book thing... 

The property is on city water/sewer which is a plus as I’m not a fan of septic tanks.

I've never been a fan of the converted garage, but that's just my opinion.More relevant is what your competition looks like.

BTW, FYI, Matthew if you read the code carefully, you can get around the natural light and ventilation by having enough lights to meet the Lumen requirements and installing a house ventilation fan will satisfy the ventilation requirements. did this on one of my properties and passed, showed the building inspector the exceptions.

I think they used a brush of some sort to make fan like sweeps that overlap each other.

Because the seller doesn’t live in the property, they allowed a few things that I am not a fan of.

I have also used seller financing, subject to financing, and a hard money loan 1 time (I'm not a fan of it but if you have no other options, it is certainly a way to go but if you gave no funds, then you need to combo that with some other form of OPM (other people's money) as hard money lenders will not fund 100% of your acquisition plus rehab.