We are new and have one property right now  but want to find an option that will grow with our business. 

We have about $30k /month in income and about $12k/month expenses leaving a surplus cash of $18k/month.We were wanting to purchase a new home for ourselves and have the cash flow to make it work.

Tuesday I'll go to bid on a couple of them.  

All new appliances, no garage, lvp floors + carpet upstairs.

Together they are 0.92 acre, which is a nice size. 

Since I don’t have many assets or a lot of cash on hand, I’ll need to be creative and strategic.

One hypothesis I have is that this is a very safe residential area in Oakland where a lot of people say it's a place they want to grow family in.

If you have so little confidence in your contractors quotes I would find a new contractor.

He asked if he could get out of lease, I was a bit furious and told him he would have to find a way to stay 2-3 months, so I would have time to figure this all out and start the new tenant process again.

If the water bill is $100 a month, increase the price by 20% (or whatever you decide is fair) to compensate you for the time required to split and bill and to cover additional use when tenants squander the utility.