The home has what looks to be an unpermitted add-on sun room that the owner built himself.

well that's what I meant.. add on lender penalty and non performing asset I suspect 100% wipe out plus having to come up with money to pay the lender.. tough spot.I know some friends of mine that had insurance company loans on Commercial during the crisis that had these terms.. and they walked from the projects.. no PG  but lost all their equity they did a 1031 and put 5 million in cash into this one shopping center that was costing him 40k a month negative because it did not fill up as it was suppose to.. and it was BRAND NEW in DENVER  OUCH..  

Advantages: LeverageRefinancing all you capital out to buy more REControlCash flowForced appreciation with renovations and other value addOne of the safest investments (much more so than stocks)

I add one more caveat to Ryan's remarks which would simply be, do not fall for the headline.

I run a small construction company, I’m going to add on more guys this season.

If you do, would it be an add-on rental to the house?  

If this is self managed you are taking on a job that a PM would charge close to $200 for (PM on SFR I have read is ~12% when including all costs such as re-up, find new tenant, contractor add-on, inspections, and monthly fee). 

My interest in real estate investing came when I heard an add on the radio for a free seminar on learning to invest in realestate with no cash or credit.

So, today i had this bright idea pop into my head while talking with a friend about it, because i was going to get all nerdy with it and build a raspberry pi with andriod so i could run the apps and just install a GPS addon to the pi, when i realized i have a few old cell phones in the drawer i no longer use that are basically paper weights at this stage in their life, so i pulled them out and picked out an old samsung s4 i replaced with my current samsung note 4 and booted it up after charging it for a few minutes and wiped it completely clean, the only app i installed for my test today was MilesIQ on the phone and set it up to my home wifi... i drove to the mall today to take the girlfriend shopping and to test the idea out, i turned off drive detection on the app on my Personal cell phone so it wouldn't log the miles and all i did was plug the old Samsung S4 into my charge cord in the car and layed the phone in my cup holder for the entire trip there and back... on my personal cell phone the notification that a trip was in progress never showed up, but the S4 it did.. and when i arrived at the mall i checked the app and it never showed any new trips added...

Some offer a few other add on services as well that I think could end up covering all my bases but still saving me a significant part of my profits.