Demolish The Home and Build New: You can demolish the existing house and build new.

In cities with static or declining populations, the existing housing supply typically meets housing demand.

Hypothetically, you'd need >2K rent on a 250K home to get more than 5% CoC (ballpark numbers with a few assumptions, mgmt fees, putting 30% down, etc), and it seems very unlikely this would exist where I'm looking..

How are you comparing the cost of a new build to one with an existing duplex?

This ensures that you protect existing tenants from direct competition and support their growth; this will also foster their trust in the ethics in which the property is managed. 

I am a fan of utilizing equity in existing real estate owned to build the rental portfolio though at the beginning, rather than just relying on money saved alone.  

Open to an existing home with a large lot/acreage.

Not understanding/not realizing a condition exists is unlikely to work as a defense.

We are late in the game but hopefully we can catch-up leveraging the plethora of knowledge that exists on this platform. 

But this also typically requires existing relationship before they will start bending their "standard" underwriting rules.