Say it was a a $200k capital gain...treating SO it as personal shelters $50k from capital gains ($7500 fed tax saved), where if you treated that as rental you pay another 3,750 in tax.

If the family can't/won't/ or doesn't clean out the personal effects, make sure to treat those in accordance with your contract and local laws.

When you see how much simple things cost, that incentives them to fix them I would think.But in a round about way, I try to incentivize them by treating them as good as possible. 

Treat them right and build that relationship.

You can also pull properties that are on the market, and Zillow Zestimates, but you need to treat all with some skepticism as they aren’t real.

You can also focus on “essential” workers by doing things like advertising on sites for traveling nurses...etc.Just keep in mind that however you market the property, you have treat all applicants the same regardless of their income or based other fair housing rules.

I always suggest going to the multi-family house hack route when starting out. 1) when starting out you are usually younger and it's much easier to house hack without a big family, not impossible to do with a family just a little harder. 2) Multi-family in most scenarios helps you save on housing cost, if not live for free, which helps you save even more money for your next deal. 3) This starts you out with more doors right away and jump-starts the investing path, not to mention it's really easy to get a single-family and forget your investing and treat it too much like your forever home by over rehabbing.

I would treat this as a last resort. 

The real estate agents take 6% or about $24,000 on a $400,000 sale and you subtract your $200,000 mortgage and $2,000 for closing and wind up with about $174,000 that sometimes gets taxed at a capital gains rate depending on how you've treated your property for tax purposes.Few banks are doing HELOCs right now.

Most of them I've never met in person, but that really doesn't matter when the level of trust is there and each party has demonstrated a track record of following through on their word (i.e. the contractor on delivering a good product and me as the customer ensuring I am paying them quickly and always treating them with respect).