I forget the seller's story, but essentially a purchase offer would have been ~$70-75K with a $30-40K rehab IIRC.

He’s been working on a rehab, he did a little bit of the work and then just stopped doing the work then started getting hard to reach.

In other words, sufficient capital for the cash purchase of a property (plus rehab) and eventually refinancing the completed project to a long term loan.

Expect there to be costs to appease the tenants.  

Read about finding off market deals and marketing to them; read about making offers and estimating rehab costs; read about building a buyers list; read about the analytics of a good rental property of flip property.

Total projected revenue will be around $3,500 per month, after the 4th rehab it will be around $4,100 (4 TOH, 4 RTO, 1 house). 

It seems like many of these things could be taken care of by RentRedi for a much lower cost. 

I'm looking at a gains amount of 40K after closing costs, realtor fees, and tax payback.

Definitely learned that budgeting the rehab correctly is sooooo important.

You could try to find more aggressive fixed income funds or ETFs, but transaction costs and market volatility could make your life difficult.