Most of these forms are boiler plate, just changing owners name and address, and charging you several hundred for it. 

There is so much MORE work involved as opposed to buying a fixer-upper and rehabbing that!

Instead of a traditional down payment, I would give them some money (maybe just to bring the loan back to even).The upside if taken over the loan at the current balance, with some rehab and hopefully getting the front lot back would be a nice ROI. 

I also don’t like renting really nicely rehabbed properties, most renters don’t take care of properties as well as we would hope.

I am trying to get a good hang of the rehab costs since I’m new to the are (from Dallas).

If you can rehab and refinance (BRRRR) to extract all investment and achieve neutral cash flow you would have infinite return (most of my RE investments have achieved infinite return but the cash neutral has in particular gotten a lot more challenging when the rates rose starting Q2 of 2022).Any money extracted via a refinance is tax deferred. 

So I bought this fixer upper for 65k, had a low monthly mortgage, used the extra money to rehab out of pocket for the next three years.

Also, is the property rentable as is or does it need a rehab loan.

On a rehab I have anything that needs to be ordered ready to submit before I settle , I place the order the day of settlement .

Rehab cost overrun is where most BRRRR investors and flippers go wrong.