Quote from @Dalton Dillon: Thanks for your response @Joe Villeneuve Possibly my question could be more specific but maybe instead of a response like that, you could ask questions to help narrow down an answer?

Since it sounds like you are working without a real estate agent, I would contact a lawyer to review the contract and help you notify the seller's side correctly to terminate the contract and release the EMD.

I am happy to help, do you strictly do deals in PA? 

Any information on this process or your experiences with tax deed sales would be so helpful, thank you in advance!

looking longterm who knows what's going to happen in the market.The largest thing to be cautious about is that with commercial tenants you as the owner often have to put up money in the form of a check or abated or free rent to help the tenant get open for business and build out the space. 

If you hadn't noticed in this post stay away from an masonry work if you can help it.

All good reading and listening, education is best and if you want to learn you have to ingest as much information as possible.I read many books that helped me, but my go-to is listeining to at least 2hrs of podcast with real examples per day.One very important things that "want-to-be" fails is to understand that real estate has many different specialities, so you have to focus your time in your real project.

Whereas, if you are holding $1,000 cash flowing property and the markets shift, you likely still have a cash flowing property that can sustain itself, and even help supplement another property that isn't in as great of an equity position. 

I can help you narrow down the best Texas market for you, DM me, and I’ll point you in the right direction!

As far as hiring the other trades, this can be difficult from a distance, who is helping locally?