The price you can pay is pre-determined by the location and condition of the house as well as your eventual strategy for the property.

The best you can do is estimate, and plan on holding for a pre-determined length of time.

You mentioned the need to fly out to your market and I'm curious how often you schedule these trips and if they coincided with certain predetermined milestones.

Pick out some predetermined fixtures, paint colors, flooring, etc.

A good GC knows how each step needs to be done and can ensure the work is done to your pre determined standards.

For instance people do not just accidentally go to work and arrive on time; they predetermine a goal to go to bed the night before at a reasonable hour, purposefully set their alarm, use will power to get up when it goes off in the morning and plan their route according to traffic before leaving the house.This just goes back to habitually setting goals, making a plan to achieve them, preparing ourselves, and using will power to accomplish those goals (no matter how seemingly big or small)!

I thought maybe they could get someone to buy the property, lease to them with an option to sell back in a set number of years at pre-determined price.

Some agreed upon pre-determined time frame to see if forbearance is working at all, and borrower is making progress on advances made on his behalf.A.)

To be clear I meant either do a balloon or just refinance in your name, by predetermined timeframe, If doing buy and hold.Hope this helps, again still new to this myself.

Plan to sell at some pre-determined margin!