Reading Vanessa Peters book “the busy professionals guide to passive real estate investing” and in it she has a chart showing initial investment of 100k, 8% preferred return, 20% cash on cash return including sale of property, and 5 year hold.Each year she shows $8k return (years 1-4) then a $168k return in year 5 including the return of equity.

It is why I asked if you really intended to offer seller financing with a 5% rate.

Look for a solid house that's in need of nothing more than updating.Major structural, utilities and foundation repairs might be a big bite for your first one. 

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Also, I believe they own this property out-right, no loans, etc.I'd like to structure a deal where they provide seller's financing with a 2-3 year off-load timeline that gives them a) some cash now via a down payment and b) some regular monthly income all while I work to bring rents to market value and we both benefit on the sale and refi.How would something like that work and what would it look like?

Doesn't mean its a necessity to have it formed here but it is a fairly straight-forward process. 

@Sarah Hadassah Negrón so you get a money judgment.Now you have to turn that into a garnishment action with the courts.To do that, you typcially need to have the tenant personally served - which means finding them or hiring a skip-tracer to do so.Then, what are you going to garnish?

So I live in a small rural community average rent goes for 1890 for a 3/2 in my zip code per the county data.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation?

Or perhaps they’re searching for peace of mind with a team they can trust to handle every aspect of their property?