BTW expect the rates of these from banks etc to be somewhere between 9-12% at a min - which in most cases does not provide enough juice from the squeeze. 

The only problem is I live 4 hours away and the home might need a-lot of capital to fix up and I don't know if the juice will be worth the squeeze. 

I have a couple of ideas on how to approach the seller but I want to get your juices flowing and see what other creative ideas ya'll can come up with. 

Not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. 

For example they took on (a) floating-rate debt (instead of fixed rate which was more expensive but safer), (b) short-term debt (cheaper but then they ran into refinancing problems) and (c) high levels of debt (to try to juice projected returns rather than conservative levels which aren't as "exciting" to a certain type of investor).

Here's a fundamental explanation to get your juices flowing:Assume a house costs $200,000 and rents for $1,500.

If there's a "secret sauce" at all, that's it.Now, can you juice your cash flow a bit with STRs/MTRs or house-hacking?

Juice is not worth the squeeze.It’s okay to walk away.

Your estimated ARV is 200k, zero juice in the squeeze.

Your verbage jumps back and forth...otherwise, I'd suggest a se401k (if it can be applied) or similiar to really get the contributions going to ~$70k annually.If you really want to "juice" the returns, try other asset classes, perhaps...Good luck.