Fireplaces are inherently dirty and the types of paint you'd have to use on brick/bricks porous nature will certainly attract and retain the dirt.  

I would have a 10% retainer held back from the contractors payment during construction.

Some green elements are not overly expensive and add a distintion to your marketing.Also, don't forget that some might want to gain cash-flow rather than take the capital gain.. so maybe they can simply pay you your 30% and retain ownership.Also, give me a $75K entry point (plan A), $150k (plan B), $300K (plan C), and $500K (plan D).

You would have economic title while the seller would retain legal title.

Personally, I imagine that employee labor is just as expensive as sub-contractors if you're not tremendously optimized in your business.I think this is very true, in that when you hire employees you explicitly have to pay all the "loading" charges of those employees.Contractors, on the other hand, can frequently be retained for less due to competition among competing contractors, as well as lack of business sophistication on the part of many contractors in pricing their services (i.e. they don't necessarily understand/quantify and build in all of their hard/soft costs, a prime example being the true cost of longer-lived items like tools and vehicles).

The current tenants signed a 2 year lease and plan on staying long term (they asked for a 3 year lease but wanted a discount), so I see it as a good way to retain good tenants. 

And regarding the Title for the property you're buying, the Lender you have the mortgage with will have put themselves in first position (thus retaining control over the Title), so that if everything goes belly up, so your folks for example, will not get any proceeds of the sale of your foreclosed property until all the Bank's debt is covered!

So, if your state allows, retain the deposit, send the proper notification (if required) to tenant's forwarding address, and move on to find new tenants that (hopefully) will be better. 

Would that course of action be a reaction out of emotion or one that would ensure you retain a higher net return?

And, in most cases, even if they don't redeem, the original owner can retain possession of the property for at least a year after the tax sale until the tax deed buyer forecloses their redemption rights.