Another house of a similar size a few doors down sold for $186K (again, not modernized, but still nice).

Or will retail bounce back in the future with new mixed use buildings and more modern "hip" retail companies needing a place to lease? 

It took the usual 1.5 months to rent and weird enough the young lady who called first out of the 30 - 40 call/ emails is out tenant.

The lady was great and gave us a tour (it was not yet listed).  

Another first world problem of mine is so many of the single ladies in my "target market" are only focused on getting their psychology degrees and working at Starbucks.

however, there was someone with a voucher who wants to move in september.There is a decent chance that i can get it rented out by the 15th of august but the lady with the voucher offered to pay me half a month of rent as a 'fee' to hold or reserve the apartment for her for september. so that way i get paid from august 15th and still get the first month rent + full SD. my question is am i allowed to do that?

Make a highly leveraged bet on these markets, and every month you may be in the uncomfortable position of trying to figure out how you will make the mortgage payments.Charlie Munger famously wrote there are three ways to go broke: Liquor, Ladies, and Leverage.

If the building is more modern the unit could potentially get close to 1500 per month.  

@Ryan Monier I had an older lady who paid for a whole year up front.

One lady came in sent me her stats.