(ie. legal costs, appraisals... etc; excluding regular housing expenses)I am very excited for this journey and meeting many talented investors! 

There is a west sac BP meet up hosted monthly at Kick N Mule sports bar in West Sac by @Sergey Tkachev.

A payment for the option to purchase will be regular income. 

There are lots of other great local groups around, each with pros and cons:TRIG: meetups once/month, paid membership, tons of local rooted investorshttps://www.trigofva.com/Hampton Roads Investor Group: Free, hosted by investor agents at 1st Class Real Estatehttps://www.facebook.com/group...Hampton Roads Landlord Associtaionhttps://www.meetup.com/HRLandl...I would continue to learn on here and connect with some other investors at the above meetups/groups to see if you really need a 10k mastermind to get started. 

Also my first 3 reviews on VRBO were posted today, every guest booking via VRBO posted a review so far.. and I'm thrilled with their feedback as well as seeing that they are enjoying their stays as much as I'm enjoying hosting.

Do her paystubs show no income or erratic hours and they're trying to paint the picture of an employee that has regular hours? 

House 1 needs a new roof and new HVAC along with all the regular stuff like kitchen upgrade, flooring, paint, landscaping.

If the price dropped 5K (just as an example) or you got a 5K credit (assuming you haven't maxed out your seller credit already - which people regularly do these days), would that make a difference in whether you're willing to take on this situation?

And if the seller did not have flood insurance then his regular homeowner's policy wouldn't cover it. 

I've seen this happen because I work with folks in situations like this regularly on a volunteer basis and we hear about it all the time on the BP Money Podcast.