Not sure yet on the amount of renters in the Littleton area and if it is the right city to complete my objective.

We had all the RIGHT puzzle pieces sitting in our laps (great realtor, carpenters, and mortgage broker as close friends and family) so we just had to simply put them together (with a lot of hard work and having a family of 4 living in one room at a time for a couple years.)We are now moving to Roslyn, WA and hope to start a similar (although not as extensive) project there and also try to acquire some SFHs in Kittitas County to start our REI education/climb to billions. :) This feels like bragging, but it was a lot of market luck, hard work, amazing friends, and a wife with an eye for staging.

Don't you, as the home-owner, get to release the funds in segments after they complete each phase?

And, I completely disagree that, "… it is not too far off."

@Jeremy Brown The prudent business decision is to simply evict the tenant.If your looking for other solutions then do whatever makes you feel best as none of those decisions have to do with your rental business.

It's simply not fair to the seller for you to tie up the property for a month with no compensation if you back out last minute.The amount of money considered "fair" for earnest money depends on the area, the market, and the seller. 

The water soaked into the concrete slab the house sat on as well as had major roof leaks (been vacant and decaying since 2013 after all), since the roof needed to be completely repaired (this property was in disarray lol).

She simply didn't want to pay rent.

Cash flow is simply the icing on the cake.

After renovation is complete, we're projecting rents to be $1800.