You might be actually underwater on it. 

One of them sold in days because it is along a major bike path but was otherwise a dated house on a rough street. 

I like house hacking to start because it gives you a better idea about whether or not you actually like being a landlord without getting too much money invested in 20 million different properties.

The road is not in, the water main not installed, the sewer main and laterals not installed, etc.Just having the engineering done, and the plan approved, adds significant value to the land, and makes it attractive to a developer who now, doesn't have to go through all that work. while in todays day and age yo would need all those approvals to create a paper lot.. back in the olden days paper lots were created by simply drawing them on a map with zero engineering they did survey though.. and there was no thought given to reality of actually building them or providing services.. 

So my partners and I can only assume they don’t actually have funds to give us.

If it were my lease, I'd just add language in an addendum to clearly state it was under the month-to-month provision from dates x to y, now lease term is extended to ... and all other provisions still remain in effect. 

@Bryan GonzalezThere's actual advice to take -- strategies, numbers, metrics, blah blah blah.

I’d be getting a better interest rate than market and the purchase price difference is negligible so I would actually cash flow more in the bond for deed scenario.

If you decide to go this route, I strongly suggest you have the same expiration date for all the leases. 

The advantage of flat rates instead of increases is the tenant becomes used to it, if they leave early you’ve actually collected higher rents, and you have an easy sell for rent increases when you “haven’t increased rent in 3 years.”