These ladies are a same sex couple. 

The lady let me take a quick look inside and by my best judgement its not in bad shape.

(basically being Certified), the selected contractor is basically 'winging it,' and you're probably taking a gamble. 

Make yourself unique, update your cabin, get creative and hang on….I admire your gamble of being leveraged in the smokies.

But it would be safer than trying to gamble in a gentrifying neighborhood in Atlanta for us beginners.

If you have good tenants who pay on time and you want to kick them out to seek market rents because you have NOT incrementally increased rents to keep within reach of market rents, then you are gambling with the next tenant and their true ability to pay rent. 

A couple of days later I was downtown at the register of deeds, and I run into the lady from the assessors office on the street, thanked her for her help and asked if I could get the same information but in an Excel spreadsheet, which arrived this morning.  

So I asked the lady if she had any other properties she'd be willing to sell.

My personal feeling is that if you are new to this, this is a huge gamble and if I were your coach/mentor/Guru(evil guy from what I understand on the forums), then I would not recommend it for you based on the info I have here.

The mortgage lady was from Texas and she was AMAZING.