The house was sitting since June with no activity and they dropped it $20k and I offered $7,000 off he new price.

She would be a great contact and she is active on BP as well :) 

Broker, direct mail etc.Direct marketing / cold calling is always a good bet, in the commercial world if you get a hold of a building owner in a principle-to-principle setting you can generally have some good conversations and suss out if there is an opportunity or not. 

Build it on excel is the best bet... you can adjust it for use in the future

Your best bet would be to do a tear off of the existing roof, inspect the wood planking for rot then re shingle it.

You can not actively do 'fix up' work inside of the accounts (IF that is what a person wants to do)You want CURRENT income instead of waiting until retirement years.With all that said, I do hold quite a bit inside of retirement accounts (as do my partners).

Gentrification is a powerful thing and having seen it up front, I wouldn't bet against it. 

With the current tax proposals, if you purchased a property with a large loan the interest may not all be deductible however renting is one of the worst things you can do from a tax perspective.Given the information you have posted and past experience I suspect that your best bet would be to structure a 1031 exchange on your property with the greatest appreciation, exchange it for a property that you want to live in, and move in after a period of time. 

The bet offer we can find through a bank is 30 years at 4% interest with 25% down.

@Dylan TranIt appears that the LLC has 3 members and it made a total of $30,000 profit in 2017.It also appears that the activity of the partnership is flipping homes.If this is the case - the partnership will file a partnership return and provide each member with a K-1 listing out $10,000 of ordinary income that is subject to self-employment tax.