After we got inside of the house, we realized that the fire damage was extensive, but only damaged a minimal amount of structural elements of the house.  

There is maintenance that can be performed that can minimize the damage.  

Our obvious concern is to minimize our liability and protect the assets, particularly as we feel fairly vulnerable in what is of course litigation land these days.

Anyone else raise the purchase price knowing that a cash buyer will pay more for a good rental that needs minimal work to get it rented?

I can find 2/1 condos or town homes for $60K that need minimal work.

At this point I want to try to minimize headaches from tenants, so not ready to compromise much there.

Educate yourself on the methods to minimize the risk. 

I just can’t believe there are places in the US where I can buy a 100k house and rent it for 2k dollars a month.I just purchased my second rental home, my strategy is buy foreclosed homes that need minimal work; most of these are cash only sales “AS IS” fix them up and rent them out. 

So that we can minimize our mistakes. 

After a while, the program learns which purchases go where, helping to minimize manual corrections.