I tried to make it feel more current, but also preserve some of the 50's character of this house.

I have 5 years of SFR rental experience, and 5 years working at a national property preservation company (rehab and maintaining foreclosed and REO) for clients like Bank of America and other large lenders, 3 years running the subsidiary of the parent company.

If by “taking control” you mean there is property preservation company with a lock box and stickers on the window.....this is SOP for vacant properties in default.

It gets harder when you have a partnership with someone else and you both want to preserve your tax base.  

If equity partner is friend/family do you take the loss to preserve relationship?

If you want to preserve or increase your current cash flow you will have to keep your debt service low.  

@Ali Boone, great to hear from you as always :)@Trevor Ewen, I like how you think about investment temperament changing, I'd never thought of it like that but it makes perfect sense that once you are actually living off investments, you are more interested in preservation than growth

Houses typically can have the "preservation co." stickers on them for a year or more before the actual foreclosure auction.  

Brokers point to the value-add opportunity to raise it to a 5-6% cap, but it seems most investors are buying here for appreciation/wealth preservation.

Your figure seems low, so maybe it's the tax the current owner pays which will be reassessed upon transfer, or perhaps there is some tax incentive such as historic preservation?