@Dave Johnson , this is a great opportunity to exercise your negotiating skills.#1 Are you working with a lender?

If you tire of the exercise you should be able to evict based on repeated late payments.

I know this is quite the brain exercise and I appreciate your time. 

One down town complex that just opened has a theater, bar, meeting/study rooms, wifi, exercise room, pool, coffee/sandwich shop.....can't think of everything but there is more.Funds come from economic development programs and banks, tax credits are involved so the financing at this scale is more sophisticated than small projects.

I might listen to the option route, where you pay me x dollars for the right to purchase my property at a certain price within 30 days, and you forfeit the option fee if you don't exercise the option, but that would likely only be if it had been on the market for quite a while with no offers.      

I should admit that I am spending too much time going through forums discussions, listening to podcasts since I came across this forum recently & I believe by doing this exercise, I gathered so much valuable information.I am interested in purchasing SFR ( around $150K) in and around Katy area near Houston in Texas.I am primarily looking at properties either ‘Buy&Rehab&Hold’ or ‘Buy&Hold’ (like to start purchasing with 1 or 2 properties with a goal to purchase 1 SFR per month in year 2015 if we get good deals).Please let me know if you do have any that might fit my requirement and we can go from there.

The mentors that I have found are good, as long as I can get them on the phone, which is a hit and miss exercise most of the time. 

We already have a small sinking fund being built up to cover the expected repairs.We actually had a prior tenant who put a lease-option in the lease; however, we had a AC repair person out to the house and he disclosed to the tenant the estimated life of the HVAC (which has a minor R-22 leak that can't be fixed and needs to be charged every 2-4 years so at some point will need to be replaced) and therefore he moved out and decided not to exercise the option.The neighborhood it's in is not fully recovered; but I say that the houses that do sell quickly seem to be the ones that have already had their major systems updated (New HVAC, Roof, Etc).  

Most people say that banks never exercise the due-on-sale clause, but seems like there's at least a little risk there.

The lease option is more of a unilateral agreement and the renters get the benefit of deciding if they want to exercise the option on X date.As an owner, I would have no issue signing a first right of refusal as that lets me work to my timeline.