And does a 203k loan require me to hire a licensed general contractor?

the big issues there........ the government is corrupt as hell. especially in the muskegon heights area. my brother has had no end of trouble with these people. also, other areas of muskegon, such as the city, they hire out their inspections process to a place called safebuilt. these people are worse than the government over there. my brother sells a lot of his houses on land contract. these people simply refuse to accept this as a sale and call his houses rentals. they claim this gives them the right to issue him tickets for repairs needed because he is the " current owner of record". they use a portion of the government system that is outdated and has inaccurate records to claim he is the owner. consequently, he winds up in court all the time with new " violations" on these " rental houses" that he has full proof that he sold years ago. as of yet, he has be able to beat them in court just by proving that he no longer owns them, but he is going to court almost every week with them. i believe they hope he will just give up and pay the fines. that is not gonna happen with him......lol. but, just so you are informed, muskegon may appear to be a good place to invest, but you will have serious hurdles to jump over on a regular basis. 

Hi, I am very passionate about real estate and am trying to learn all I can, but I'm sick of learning and not doing! So since my time is so fully used up, I thought I'd volunteer for two hours a week helping an experi...

So, if you hire someone, make sure they are a go getter and don't put off the work.

I just default back to what I do were I can open escrow without a contract and with a phone call.. but that's because of the volume of bizz I do with title company .. and our title plants are digital.. so running a title search is not as big an issue like it is in many east coast states I work in.. were they have to actually hire a title abstractor to physically pull title.. ( old school :))

Make your offer based on what it would cost to renovate assuming you were hiring out the work.

From a lending perspective, you would be much better off if she was hired to a traditional W2 job. 

Haha.Did u hire contractors for the work?

Painting: $1,500 to $3,000 hired out on a 3 bedroom, 8 room house 2 story, includes wall prep.

Frankly, I'd see if you can hire a property inspector to come with you for the day to give their impressions.