I was thrilled with the finish.

And unless you have previous construction experience, I would stay away from getting involved in a major rehab project on your first rental.A huge rehab (for your first project) could mean you end up with a partially torn apart duplex with no tenants and not enough cash to finish the project literally forcing you into a distressed sale or worse.IMO its more important to learn the process of being a landlord and be fairly safe by buying a rent ready house than it is to make a huge return on your first property. 

Before I finished the rehab, I asked about the vacant house across the street.  

My commute to work gives me about an hour plus to listen to BP podcasts...which is great because when I get home I have three babies and wife that are pulling for my time.My plan is to finish the Millionaire Real Estate Investor and read the BP Beginners Guide which I just downloaded (@Dmitriy Fomichenko thanks) to start developing a model.  

I was curious, because it looked too good to be true with big white columns (looked like an old courthouse or something), high end finishes, and the same verbiage about taking a loss and might be willing to do trades of some sort.  

I have just finished negotiating the purchase price of a lake house in central NY for 192,500.

Since there is nothing now, you will have to run all utilities to the site and construct everything (foundation, roof, walls, and all interior finishes) I would definitely call some GC's and get a better ballpark figure and be positive the city will allow you to construct.

They just never look as good as factory finished cabinets so that's the route I would go.  

Just finished and I am about to read low/no money down one.

I would like to ask the tenants to vacate the unit for the month of may and offer them first dibs at the unit once the work is finished and let them know that there will be a large rent increase.