@Eddie Quirk when I bought my first house I had zero experience in every area, and the place had to be gutted completely.

Mostly seasonal wind energy/ oilfield workers, and seasonal school teachers have been previous renters.Sweat equity for bathroom to be completed by myself (10 year unIon carpenter in my former life in Southern CA) total materials $1091.84.The (3) appliances are $1645.

You probably need to wait until cleanup maybe stick framing, but should be able to sell prior to completion.

You can buy fixer uppers and have real equity once repairs are complete.

These deals can be profitable, but for various reasons are difficult to complete and difficult to profit.

In so doing, I think I've located a SFH that an out of state investor purchased and started to rehab but maybe ran out of money before it was complete.  

or should I look at this at a completely different angle?

Yes I realize this is completely on us for not managing our property properly.

@Sal Castaneda, I am in COMPLETE agreement with you.  

The general idea is the bank will loan you extra money to cover the cost of repairs,  this is typically only done with commercial loans and they usually escrow the money and release it to you as you complete the repairsBy way of example say you buy a 500K house that need 100K in repairs.