If he's going by on Tuesday with a dumpster, I'd meet him at the house and as soon as he's done, change the locks. 

To set the stage, I'm owner of a short-term rental property in the Poconos in PA and we use a property management company for bookings, maintenance/cleaning, guest management, etc.This past weekend we had a guest booking but when the guests arrived Friday evening the house had no running water, though it had been running fine earlier in the day when the Property manager (PM) was at the house to give a final check and leave the welcome packet.

And many times the houses were not touched.. so sweat equity.there were companies in Texas that would prey on non English speakers.. they trolled BP a few years back. 

My wife not comfortable putting our house as equity, therefore we are utilizing other options to fund investment properties. 

This is basically a math problem that will depend on both you personal finances & also how much of this is an investment vs you want a nice house to live in4.

Quote from @Daniel Tanasa: Hello Terry, If you're looking to find houses that are in pre-foreclousure you can use a website like www.foreclosure.com and you can get the list of properties and start marketing to them. 

If she went to buy a house and applied for a mortgage, I think the lender would say the same thing aka you don't qualify until you get this removed from the credit report.

We had no experience building a house from scratch but I did have a bank willing to lend to us.

For context, I'm based in the SF Bay Area in CA and looking into buying my first OOS rental after house hacking locally for 10 years.

Get the house hack under contract and closed first.