Insulation can hold a ton of water but even then it gets heavy and will quickly saturate the drywall, which would be fairly obvious.

At the time, there were a fair amount of property in Santee that would provide a 7-8% cap rate, which mine was, but due to rent increases and a little house hacking, it now rates 10%.

We have a fair amount of equity built into our primary home.  

I had a contractor that does ground-up construction, he got tired of owners not paying him on time, workers complaining for weeks without pay, material delays by owner, so he stopped being a contractor, he now runs 4-6 jobs at a time for someone, he is fairly happy with his hourly job and won't miss the things of being a contractor.

In that idea, you may be able to petition the court to rule on what is equitable (read as fair) in terms of the right of redemption held by the sons.  

If you get an FHA loan like the others say, and you buy a fairly cheap property then you should still have a very nice cushion in your savings. a $50k property with 3.5% down would be $17,500 down leaving you with $12,500 in savings.Now, if multifamily properties in your area aren't selling cheaply enough for you to get a deal like this then maybe I would say look at a different route.

We bought this place 3 years ago, for 130k could have sold it for 170 6 months ago. with renovations im fairly confident we could sell close to 200k based on recent comps. i think if we put 15-20 into it we can get it where it needs to be in order to do so.

I don't know how gift cards fair with tax write offs, but a $5 house plant and a nice card for Christmas is always a winner.  

Those are all fairly common ideas I think. 

You can do a basic "oil and grease" contract fairly Inexpensively or "all inclusive" contracts for a little more.