Regarding finding discounted deals......That is the reason why I started a wholesaling business. 

Bad contractors are one of the main reasons why first time investors never do a second deal.

The reason not to upgrade, is that you won't get that much more income for the cost of the upgrades.  

Design happens to be one of my passions, and I’d love to help you brainstorm ideas or suggest some cost-effective design solutions that could work for your project.If you’d like, feel free to share some details about the style you’re aiming for or any preferences you have.

A $107k NOI with a 43% expense ratio is impressive, even with rising costs like taxes, insurance, and utilities.

If the applicant comes from the pool of people that I or my tenants know, I use real estate as a way to give back as many of my tenants will not qualify credit wise or may even have a criminal background or would struggle for another reason if I were to just stick to the "background/credit check" criteria. 

That's three months of mortgage and utilities, the cost of flooring, and the cost of painting.

And while yes, no one has the same pricing (combination of factors), I also continue to check on a regular basis our rankings and how we "present" on total costs per stay vs. our competitors.My gut says there is price creep and we might have a ways to go before the market really corrects.

To me at my current knowledge level, this deal only works if taking over the loan - to limit the out of pocket money to acquire the property since the outside reno and new septic would take up the bulk of rehab costs. 

There is no PPP and the closing costs are slightly lower compared to a DSCR loan.