I would only deviate from that on a rare occasion for the perfect renter that walks on water."

If you parceled this off, sold the vacant lots, and sold the fully renovated property, what would you walk away with after spending 75/sqft on the rehab + holding costs?

Roofstock.com walked me through the deal providing the agent, lender, management and insurance references.

We walked it, discussed numbers and they provided construction references.

While selling this home would be easy, after paying for everything you will have less than 150K to walk away with.

., as a way of ensuring that I put it towards a renovation and not just walk away with it.

If you're interested in fix & flips and haven't already, read "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs" by J Scott to have some framework when walking properties.

I get all their houses walked by 1 sometimes 2 different GCs even before I tell them about it. 

I could not read the NYT article because you need a subscription, but I found another article that walks one through a numbers exercise of determining the true cost of owning versus renting Do you think this provides similar sound advice? 

I can walk you through several projects currently in progress at different stages and answer questions, etc.