Thankfully it was an exterior space, had it been the kitchen on the other side of the wall the cleanup would have been more extensive.

If some resource on the land does get used up, then you can take a deduction for depletion.

It doesn't take much to clean up an animal mess and replacing flooring and painting is an expectation.

Buy a couple fixers and move in, fix up and rent then move into another, fix up move and rent, buy another fixer, move in, clean up and rent.

We put down 20% on the downpayment which depleted a large chunk of our savings.There is still 60k left to pay off on the condo at a 4.3% interest rate.

I didn't use any fancy algorithm, but did try to clean up the data as much as I could, and applied a few filters.

I did that drive to a property today that I need to clean up in another city.   

Thank you both @Corby Goade @Chris Seveney - This is the quick analysis I did from a 5-year perspective: Buy the SFH at $220k, $5k clean-up to get rent ready Strategy 1 (hold as rental): Worth $322k (assuming 3% increase in value each year)Rent over 5 years: $83,400 (after PM, insurance, taxes, etc.) 

If things go wrong, and they always do, then you will either have to depend on these strangers to sort it out for you, or if they created the problem, fire them and hire somebody else to clean up the mess.

Then the other wholesalers in the market have to either try to clean up their mess or wait.