I'm in India at the moment so no steelhead fishing for me.  

if not your offer could be viewed as fraudulent, as far as "wholesale value" you have a contract below that, so what is that value, that could be up to a court to decide, plenty of people sell paper, and some get screwed, all I'm saying is Nut Up and buy the property, add value and resell, then you are safe, if you cant buy the property, you shouldnt be offering on it.  

And the good ones have much better fish to fry than some idiot with a $200K purchase contract.

Now sellers will say your costs are nuts and to go by their 35 to 40% expense numbers.

I'm batting 50% and it is driving me nuts.  

Everything would need to be gutted and the layout redesigned, floor joists are an issue that need to be corrected, as the floors are sagging and there are cracks in the beams, soup to nuts the house needs it all except for a roof which was recently done and the siding just needs to be patched up.  

You won't catch fish every day you go fishing, but some days you will catch the big one.

So for example, when I explain to her that some "assets" (like a personal residence) can actually be detrimental to our finances and some "liabilities" (like leveraged debt) can actually be beneficial to our finances she doesn't immediately try to check me into the nut house. 

It was spread across several hundred units - half of which we recently sold because we felt markets were getting nuts again.

An experienced person specifically like me can walk in, cut through the crap and drill down to the nuts and bolts and figure it all out and if there is a deal to be had put it together.