Sometimes they would bargain with their tenants on rent by trading services. 

Less expenses: Stop going out to eat so much, trade your car for a cheaper one, sell the $5000 golf clubs for $1000 ones, 1 vacation a year instead of 2 or 3 a year because "I deserve it", cut the grass yourself.I am being a little silly, but seriously get on a budget and see what you need to do to cut expenses or where you can work a little harder.

Also, the rehabs you can learn from the gc and/or trades what should be happening in what order. 

If you know from prior research that assets like that, in that market, trade for a 7.5% cap, then it's as easy as $70k / 7.5% = $933k.So $933k is your starting place.

So I trade risk related to out-of-state investment, with risk to hold huge leverage in over-bloated market in tenet friendly state, but I am losing opportunity to build a skill-set of out-of-state investing which will help me to scale faster and be flexible in the future.If we buy cheaper house but further from the city, we will spend a lot more time in the commute(3 days in the office mandate), in this case we will trade time(commute) for money(affordability) it makes it not an investment, but another work.

There aren't many 5+ unit properties trading in those areas, and the 2-4 market doesn't really trade on a cap rate basis, because it's very owner occupied heavy.

Sorry you had this happen....But there are a few takeaway lessons here.First - Never use a GC that advertises as any other trade.

My estimates say if I were to bring in the sub-trades myself I can get this project completed at about 80k.

Between market fluctuations, every so-called expert's economic forecast, and natural disasters…sure, I can understand that.

Back in the day, these criminals had to learn the tricks of the trade from other criminals.