And with more renovations, you will start to get better at ball parking things, but even then you will always uncover items, so make sure you are baking in enough profit, even after conservative renovation budgets to feel confident you won't lose money.

But this also lets you bargain by saying "you say it makes money but you have never claimed any profit".If you like it and then you get a lawyer to draft a contract with all the Details, detailed out even more and push for a closing day.Once that is good to go, you make a new business then do a DBA form if you want to keep the existing name for recognition.The buyer does NOT need a representative like Real Estate, it is fairly uncommon for buyers to have one.

So he basically got a house for free, plus 24k profit to keep for himself.

What you may want to consider is bringing in an equity partner to fund a portion of the deal and have you manage it and find a way to allocate the profits to each party. 

You have to vet your tenants well and also I would implement other strategies like seller finance aka rent to own to boost profitability.

We've never had one PM company that we made a profit with.  

Investors  like us have a smaller profit margin. 

As you start closing deals, you will need to reinvest your profits into mailing lists and other scalable activities to grow your business.

My breakdown is about 1/4 Section 8, 1/4 non profits and the rest are regular folks renting .

I suppose there is a reason agents are doing it but I cannot see this as a profitable endeavor...