We chose to leave $25,000 invested as a bit of cushion until the restaurant has completed their renovations.Lessons learned?

Getting someone to leave the house in Florida while in foreclosure is difficult. 

Unfortunately there's a lot of alarmist/scare tactics utilized to upsell these services that do nothing but generate revenues for those who are selling the service and often leave the clients with recurring expenditures i.e  annual maintenance costs.  

Most come out ahead over an extended period of time by buying better quality assets where they perhaps have to leave some capital in the property but find themselves able to sell for real gains or refinance out appreciated equity and scale more effectively that way. 

There are rotations that happen every year, where soldiers leave for the next station and then the next batch comes in soon after.

If you have 60k equity and 10k cash, slow down and remember this - you need 15k for reserves for a new property and you should always only use half of your equity which would leave you with 15k for downpayment and 10k cash for renovation.

If you don't know the process you leave yourself very vunerable.

However, if for example, the company did not install or disconnect the washer and dryer correctly (such as leaving a valve on) while water is turned off prematurely, causing damage, what language do you put in the Lease to also hold other parties accountable such as ALE and appliance install company?   

That will leave you with limited funds to actually purchase the house.

If you need to leave in less than a year, you need a really good reasonbecause Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VA and other secondary market makers don't like foryou to get owner occupied loans and then not stay in the property.