If it's in a bad neighborhood then there is a chance that copper pipes or wires were stolen.

Welcome Penn! I

Google will accept pennies instead of nothing if you have an ad hardly anyone ever searches for but since you have 100,000's of ads you end up with some decent volume and your cost per click goes down substantially.

Option 2 would be to live frugally (not easy since you are buying a home) and save every penny until you can afford the down payment on a positive cash flow multi plex you can maintain yourself.If you do not yet have children you can concentrate your efforts on buying a first investment property.

Dont forget to give a protective coating to the concrete floor

@Penny Clark Awesome, really appreciate the insight Penny!

I don't know collection laws in Oklahoma, but here in Texas you'll never get a penny out of him unless he has gobs of assets just hanging out there. 

I find that with these options, appraisal risk is still really high b/c even though the bank doesn't mind you having no skin in the game, the local appraiser doesn't want to give the CA investor who bought the property for pennies on the dollar months before a high ARV.

10 days after closing on the property someone broke into our basement and cut wires from our electrical box (for the copper).

The SD was $500.We had to tear out the carpet, padding, scrap up the glued down areas of padding, even remove the tack strips in areas because they were soaked, scrub the floor, put an enzyme solution down, cover with plastic, then seal the floor with two coats of Kilz before the new carpet could go in.Plus, the normal cleaning because obviously he could not clean the appliances, etc.