I personally went on MD's Assessment and Taxation and found that no one has redeemed ground rent through their department. 

Creating an LLC won't do much for you as you'll still need to personally guarantee the loan and if you can't qualify, then you've made no progress. 

The comps/estimates in the area are around the same price but the tax assessment in 2016 had this at $47.6K, which makes me a little weary.

So, the Seller, who is also the Listing Agent, strongly of course agreed with my assessment, when sharing the comps above. 

And assessment doesn’t get paid.

Don't forget the asbestos assessment when you fix the ceiling, nobody has mentioned that some older popcorn ceilings were made from Asbestos. 

I don't at all agree with the assessement that flipping or the fact that Memphis has a lot of turn key type companies is keeping folks from owning.prices have not shot up there like other areas.. they are consistant and you can buy any number of thousands upon thousands of homes for 120k or under and in todays interest rate environment these mortgage payments plus tax and insurances are the same or lower than rent.the issue in these areas is simply demographics.. and as stated the perception that many have they don't want to OWN homes.. homes in non appreciating areas like these are liabilities to the homeowner .. easier to rent and let the landlord fix everything and pay the taxs and insurance.you have a huge amount of the population that will NEVER qualify for a mortgage under todays guidelines.. this started changing in 02 to 04.. when I first started lending in Memphis and in the deep south my vendors were all flipping to retail.. then as credit got tougher they found this new thing called turnkey it also ran parallel to the real estate value run up in CA and other high priced markets.. when high price markets no longer could hit anywhere near the 1% rule..

There have been too many property repairs + assessments and it just eats out cashflow.

Yes, I used the county website but their tax assessment is so far off from what the actual value of the home is, which is why I'm confused.

The settlement checks were made payable to myself and the Loss Payee to protect their equity (and they were a pain to work with, but it got done)I contracted to get the work done and progress payments made to the contractor and his subs.The two need not be connected andYour contract for work includes the set price you determined and getting the job requires accepting that price regardless of actual cost to complete.