Keep in mind that many of these cheap homes are selling for less than a third of their insurance replacement value, which really means that the land has negative value - let that sink in.Most buyers who can actually qualify for a mortgage will get a PA for $200-300k and desperately want to upgrade their life.

I think your best approach is to pretend you are the investor yourself, calculate build cost (mortgage with interest) + Maint / cap expenses/ management fees according to your zoning and then compare that to the average rent in that neighborhood.

I have about 150k equity in my home and have $215k balance on my mortgage.

I had another local realtor tell me it might be worth a shot at least trying to fill it as an MTR for the first 3 months of 2025 as I don't owe my first mortgage payment on my new home purchase until March 1st of 2025.

Let’s be conservative and say that it would only sell for $300k : you spent $100k on it anyway… and now your over all mortgage would go from $700k to minus $300k or $400k.

The commercial loan should go on your personal Sch E of your tax return too, if the property is used as a rental, where the mortgage interest paid will show.

But then i ran numbers and realized that at current rates i have to pay 4300 (3300 Mortgage, 1000 Prop taxes ,900 HOA) . 

In working on construction loan financing, the lender informed me I'll need to unencumber that portion of the property (makes sense) before closing on the construction loan.I understand there to be two methods generally speaking: refinancing my mortgage and removing that portion of the property in the process OR attaining a partial release from the lender to remove that land.I *strongly* want to avoid refinancing as I have an amazing rate, but partial releases seem complex and also require a survey.

There are many duplexes and multi-family existing housing available to choose from. 

This ensures that you protect existing tenants from direct competition and support their growth; this will also foster their trust in the ethics in which the property is managed.