All of this has to feed into the design otherwise a major error could result.To distill this kitchen commentary down, the approach I take to the kitchen is generally as follows; allocate enough space to the kitchen incorporate the best possible arrangement of upper and lower wall cabinets into the spaceselect the materials and finishes that best suit the audience and budgetbuild and install the kitchen with a skilled crew finish the job with the appliances, tile, lights, counters, etc to create the complete kitchen.These instructions are somewhat detailed, but what I can't convey is the specifics.

If you raise the rent $300, even if they can pay that, there goes money they might be saving for a traditional downpayment, unless you roll the rent increase into a qualifying purchase-option arrangement of some sort.

Seems to me it locks the owner into a financial arrangement that's unilaterally one-sided.

Technically, @Joshua Rolfe you don't have any right to put up signs or advertise for that house until you close, unless you have made other arrangements in the contract.  

For this deal, you can try pay as you go ... if it works out, then propose a partnership arrangement where he puts in some funds, you put in some funds, and you split the profits ... since he will be boots on the ground managing them, it is only fair that he either gets more of the profits or you put in more of the money and you get equal shares of profits ... just what is fair on that split is up to you both to negotiate, but the key thing is he has some skin in the game and he gets a bit extra for the work and local expertise he is providing.

I have worked with new construction, SFHs, MFPs, College living, house hacking arrangements, Airbnb ect...

So after how many units would you consider that arrangement?

I believe the investor had arranged to buy it directly and pay the "wholesaler" a chunky finders fee. 

Is this a common arrangement?

I know there really isn't any typical arrangement but I just want to see what are some of the general practices are out there in the market.