We plan on starting renovations on the unit in X (I would say a date but in reality have a 2-3 month buffer), and based on this we are no longer going to be renting the unit out.

Good job on getting started. 

Stay consistent and things will start to fall into place

@Abigail Kingprimarily off market although, i've started to engage on on-market deals if i think they will fitvery difficult to find

It's pretty easy to see that real estate proces peaked around 2007-2008 and then crashed during the Great Recession.Around 2011-2012 prices started to recover and got back to their pre-Crash highs around 2015-2016, but really 2018-2019 when adjusted.So, why are newbies reading books written BEFORE 2019 and thinking that you can still successfully invest using the EXACT advice in these relatively "old" books?

If you ask the manager to justify a fee and he starts hemming and hawing, move on or require them to remove the fee.

Whether your at $0 or $10mm of personal cash to start with.   

Typically starting with a smaller rehab budget of $50K or less (maybe a max of $75K) and avoiding a 1 to 1(or higher) ratio of purchase to rehab costs is recommend when you are first starting out. 

I would start there and think of anything that I could do to stay in the house for a while as it sounds like you would be losing a bit of money with the other options. 

if you are looking for advice, you are in the right forum. start reading and grow