No guarantee it will work, but it can at least help re-ground the seller's expectations. 

Secondly, having done multiple rehabs on my properties I can almost guarantee that you will go over budget and over timeline early in your REI journey.  

@Ian SinclairYou can finance investment property in your retirement account but since IRS rules prohibit personal guarantee you can't use conventional financing, you must use non-recourse loan.

I can pretty much guarantee it was thrown in the trash by someone (Most likely the owner/bank) somewhere down the line. 

There are NO GUARANTEES with investments at all.

To guarantee that I would never get another job, I sued for wrongful dismissal and won.

Now, if I knew I had a guaranteed income of $200k year at my regular job, then I'd definitely take a $6k hit/yr and bet on LA long term appreciation.

Now I’m at the refinance step and every bank I talk to will not give me a loan even with me personally guaranteeing the loan.  

Thanks Anson for the response, I had communicated that it might take anywhere from a few days to 30 days for us to find someone, and the person she signed with said she would get the money tomorrow guaranteed.

We have explored the option of purchasing directly into an LLC and, as expected, rates are horrible from these specialty lenders (8%+ w/ personal guarantees).