What I can tell you, as a startup, with few properties, the tax return alone can eat up most of, or all and then some, of your profits.  

I would tell them your concern about vacating and you having to eat the costs of an unexpected turn over and that you would like to help them with their new exciting addition to the family as much as possible.

In CA my larger expense it the Fat *ss mortgage that is MONEY IN THE BANK for me. 

If they decide after 18 months they dont want to flex their option to buy, its even better for you because you keep every penny they spent on the house, and then you can start over and collect another fat payment up front with another 18 month lease option.

Here's an idea, don't eat paint chips!

A project like this can eat you up if you've not properly prepared all the details.

Once you get the first deal under your belt continue going and don't get lazy after the first deal some people will after they get that fat check of $2,000 or $15,000 check.

You could always have your cake and eat it too.

Some areas you can concentrate your efforts in are 1) Ruskin - New amazon warehouse employing several hundreds of people here2) Lithia / Fishhawk area - Great schools but beware of high CDD + HOA + Property taxes that'll eat into your COC return3) Winter Garden - Booming market in orange county, has a new hospital and several new business coming up.  

I know how these things go.So think about it  fully rehabbed 40k home.. that home has to be bought for 5 to 10k  because if you want a home that is rehabbed it needs at least 15 to 25k of work done to it .. so it does not eat you up in cap ex.. so lets say the company wants to make 10k  ( pretty common for house flippers) so the most they can be in the home is 30k  so you are buying the lowest of the low at wholesale values the worse of the worse areas.. and on the face these do not equate into long term steady cash flow vehicles. they just don't  they only are sold to those to new or naive to understand this won't work long term....