Years later I stand with them and admire their investing technique and I am modifying it so that it works well for my situation.How do I define a 'Mom and Pop Investor'?

If your Modified adjusted gross income is $150k (if married) or lower then you can utilize any rental losses taken (that $1,700 will overall reduce your tax liability) However if your MAGI is over that, the loss will carry forward to next year. 

Part of us really wants to take on the challenges and if it doesn’t work as a rental, using he $100k budget then we just modify strategies to a flip where we should have plenty of runway to break even.

I've been using a lease I found and modified since I got started.

It is also odd that the title co. is involved in modifying the possession date. 

@Joel Owens the tenants are already occupying the property, so no need to modify anything.

Bank may defer payments, modify loans, or lend more for improvements.

If there are flaws, would there be ways to modify it to make a deal make sense? 

Been an owner for 4-5 years, learned quite a few things already, among which is that a commercial kitchen is not something to be made or modified lightly - it has to be properly designed and properly made in order to function well.So I have this retail store of about 1100 sqft that someone wants to take for a small coffee shop with the ability to bake.My question is where do I start searching for someone to design/compute small walk-in cooler, grease trap, vent-a-hood, stove and HVAC on top of that so all this could become useable without anyone getting burned.From my past experience I have local mexican crews who can do any and all of the listed things and they'd do them relatively well except they won;t ever be designed to actually work well together.On the other end of the spectrum I've worked with american general contractors and they tend to cost 2-3 times the Mexican crews and, at least in my case, ended up delivering about same end result (in all fairness it was only kitchen remodeling, not design from ground up; but statement stands valid and I was able to later do almost the same at literally third of the cost).Your expertise is appreciated.

@John Hyre, what is your opinion on modified gross leasing?