The down payment plus closing costs, expenses to make the property rent ready, travel back and forth (do not purchase a property in a market that you have not visited and/or do not plan to visit pre and post purchase), and the required cash reserves puts your realistic purchase price around $150k. 

So here's my question:Is it normal to take a pre 90 day LTV to recoup the purchase cost, wait the seasoning period, and refinance the rest of the cash out at a later date?

If you generated a bunch of losses with pre-in service expenses then those were incorrectly accounted for, and should be improvements/basis items. 

The thought is, if the structure is rebuilt, you would be in the same (or most likely better shape) than pre-loss.  

There's an absentee-owner house I've been watching in my neighborhood that recently went into pre-foreclosure.

We are finding that working with individuals in pre-foreclosure has been fruitful and there are so many people that have 40% equity or more.

The mailers I send consist of distressed properties that I drive by using the driving for dollars method, pre-foreclosures, divorces, and absentee owners. 

These are pre-renovated properties that are available for renting.

@Edward SchenkelI am in California and understand your advice may not pertain here but what are legal danger zones of wholesaling pre-foreclosures that I should watch out for?

They offer their support by coaching, software for finding/tracking deals(off-market -pre-auction houses), and team support while making deals, also do financing of 100% of deals and split the profit  50/50.