By a professional estimate I mean having a contractor bid the work, not just me estimating the jobs. 

Man you are doing a great job! 

My core investing philosophy is pretty simple, and has done very well across almost two decades and numerous cities:1) Invest in cities with population (and job) growth2) Invest in parts of the city where household income is near the median (or slightly below)3) Invest in properties that provide cash flow from day 1 Thank you for sharing that. 

You could post the job description being as detailed as possible.

Nice job closing that first, but don't rush.

I left my job earlier this month with the intent of retiring -- not so sure how that's working out as now I'm interviewing as I feel like I'm not being productive (this is an entirely different beast).  

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.

Thus, I have worked 2 jobs (1  is self employment) for 7 years to fund purchasing a few single family homes locally. 20k is not enough to purchase IMO, that should be your savings AFTER your purchase.

The husband had a good paying job that had a slow season where he would collect unemployment a few months per year.

I think it does a good job of introducing different strategies and lingo of investing in a  digestible way and allows someone to find what they may find interesting and then learn more about that.