You can not make a living wage have $100+ cell phone, $100+ cable, $700 to $1000 car payments, Housing, Vacations and still save money for investment, they will not take short term Pain for long term gain.

Sure we can give your our coin(s) on the matter but its best to make the final decision after securing professional input of all of the pros and cons for various types of entity structuring and the likes of in whichever State(as laws and costs vary by State)and so forth....Kudos,Mary 

Id try chase marriot and cap one venture, say your income is 7 times your monthly debt payments OR 104k (which ever is more - its all stated income)If you dont pull 30-50k between them with that score - you may not be looking at real fico scores. 

i would work a deal with the seller for say 6 months to a year. take the selling price, in this case, $159k, divide that buy 360 ( months on a conventional mortgage of 30 years) that sum will be the monthly amount it would take to pay off the $159k if you were to sign a land contract with the owner. then, agree to pay the seller that monthly amount for the 6 months or a year, whichever you decide, until the end of that short term contract. the total amount you have paid to the seller by then would be taken off the total selling price, then you finance that amount. 

You can also check with cell phone carriers to see if they think your buildings might be a good area to put up a cell tower and rent the space from you (though I believe that space is mostly for high rises?)

Also, whenever you want, let us know and we'll take the time to show you what exactly we'd do with you.Good luck in which ever direction you go and feel free to reach out anytime!

I'd stick to 15% of the ARV or 20K whichever is higher...

Good luck to you whichever path you chose.

In CA you can't collect more than $1,000 or 10% of your CONTRACT before the project starts, whichever is lesser, BUT you can collect parts of the material that you'll be using, interior materials?

I'll spare you the Being Prepared clichés  :)    First thing that came to my mind was, I would have either used my cell phone or tablet and quickly downloaded a contract and had her sign that in lieu of any other documentation.