There are legal ways to avoid paying that tax and ending up with a lower tax bill but beware of cookie-cutter advice from the internet.

To give you some examples, what I thought would be minor aesthetic repairs to the ceiling turned out to be structural issues, just about every pipe in the crawlspace burst when I turned the water back on due to the house being vacant for so long without any winterization measures taken and many issues with electrical outlets due to the previous homeowner nearly rigging the entire electrical system with duct tape.

Without the economies of scale and process creation by doing 100's of rehabs or cookie cutter builds, it's very hard to stick to "on paper" budgets for both time and money.

Then oil was deregulated and the drillers started stacking their rigs.

The way I market these homes appeals to people who appreciate art and something beyond a cookie-cutter row house.

In the areas we invest our houses are "cookie cutter".

The generic, cookie cutter ratios are good starting points to see if it makes sense to even check it out.

It may be foolish but there should not be much competition, except for the house rigged bidding.  

We were planning to move to the Gulf of Mexico for a job flying off-shore oil rig stuff but we decided we could never leave this beautiful place.

If you go back to same lender /loan officer then it should be very cookie cutter.