In the meantime, my in-law blew/gambled away a good portion of the money that insurance had paid him.

As a painful lesson that so many learned in the downturn, it is folly to include the gamble of price appreciation in our real estate analysis.

So neither of us should take offense ...So, are you in the gambling business where you "roll dice", or are you in the investing business where the objective is to learn how to become more profitable?

The Reno economy is very much based on logistics besides tourism/gambling, we have distribution centers for Walmart, Amazon, Chewy, etc.

At best its a semi-educated guess, at worst its gambling. 

I hear what you're saying about the cost to make them habitable but I don't think that will be considered a gamble when you're looking backwards a few years from now. 

Gamble.

I do not gamble with this. 

You may want to research why paying 50% upfront is a high risk gamble and why you should NEVER pay cash.3) WHEN: housing values are not predicted to drop - although they may flatline.

Now if you could get a loan for the credit card amount at a lower interest rate then ya, but getting more debt on a gamble to maybe save 100-200/month to pay off your insane interest rate CC doesn't seem like something i could ever do.Granted everyone has their own situation and not any situation is the same but based off what you have said soo far, even paying your credit down now, you are not sure how long your single income is going to last for so you will probably be using that Credit card and accumulating more debt.