Since your husband is a first-time homebuyer and eligible for conventional financing, you might be able to use his status to buy a single-family property, live in it for a bit, and then turn it into a rental down the line.

But if the blue sky materialized then repurchasing that equity could still turn into a win/win.

How does one take the owner finance situation to a bank and turn it into a 30 year loan to hold without an additional down payment of 20 percent ?

These have been very grounding.I don't want this feed to turn into a chain of the same type of comments so I'll bring attention to what matters the most - two quotes from my original post.Thanks again all:)

Since most of the homes that flooded took on electrical damage, you will almost certainly need to file a permit to do renovation as you will need the electric company to shut the power off, provide temporary meters, and turn the power back on.

I had a few houses that lost about 30k in equity overnight in the area (had been considering selling to do a 1031 into some new builds, but that turned into a less attractive idea after the equity drop).

Full turn around on the project is 4 years.

Turned our pretty nice though. 

It is always service providers (Turn Key Operators, PM's, agents etc. etc.)  

I self-manage and produce $700 in pure cash flow each month.Lessons learned?