Purchase price: $330,000 Cash invested: $1 Sale price: $820,000 This was a zero down deal.

Purchase price: $33,000 Cash invested: $6,000 3/2 on a quarter-acre lot in a rural setting.

Or when you say 100k .. do you mean investor has to basically pay cash for the lot and trust the home will be built etc etc.  

If you are doing a DSCR for under $125K its not worth the loan if you can find it for a few reasons.

Could also be worth it to contact a couple of landlords via Airbnb or rental websites directly by being a "guest"

And, even if you could find an appraiser to do an evaluation, it's not clear how that would help you.As you state, the motel has been shut down for nearly three years, so there's no current financial data.But even if you had recent numbers, you're planning to operate it as a sober living facility, which I suspect is a very different business model.You need to find a comparable facility in or near your local market and develop your own customized financial analysis model based upon this particular property.Then, given your business objectives (cash flow and cash-on-cash return, I assume), you'll need to back into what purchase terms you'll need to achieve those objectives.Only then will you be able to determine whether these seller financing terms will work.As far as documentation to get started, a letter of intent (LOI) is commonly used but you might move straight to a purchase and sale agreement, particularly if no agent is involved.Whichever path you choose, just be certain to give yourself plenty of time to thoroughly perform your due-diligence.

How much is your time and mental energy worth to you?

I don't have much liquid cash available, so I'm trying to get a little creative.

Yes its definitely worth doing.

It will be a whole lot cheaper to do it now than when you have to give back a week's worth of rent, and then pay someone twice the going rate to go and fix it.