I suspect repairs will take 12 months and I will need 2 years to get the tenants to leave. not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze but the ability to project year over year costs, improvement work and the final refi must be out there in someone's excel folder. or am I over complicating things? 

I said, "doesn't sound like an emergency, I'll get you guys a screwdriver set, but there's different screw heads that I'll have to show you if you never done it before".On the other extreme, I got a middle age tenant who used to be a home improvement contractor, belonged to the sheet metal workers union working for a municipality, was furloughed at one point.

Check out the housing stats:Florida Realtors research demonstrates a year-over-year Closed Sales up 57%, Cash Sales up 119%, Average Sales Price up 33%, Dollar Volume up 110% ($2.7 billion), and Months Supply of Inventory down 59% in Miami-Dade County.Fortune Builders recently listed Miami as a top ten city for rental prices (Check out Fortune Builders Cities with Highest Rents data), and Insurify places Miami at #3 for percentage of renters (Where are the Renters?).

Market driven appreciation is very subjective as opposed to forced appreciation through rent bumps and improving NOI.

Unless you can further elaborate what your building or how it improves the cash-flow/property value I don't see this as a wise investment.

Family has made all all the mortgage payments in the meantime, and incremental improvements to the property over time (added back deck with ramp, double paned windows to all bedrooms and living room).

Because it's raw land...there wasn't much I had to do to it...but after looking at the local comps and how other agents were marketing properties in the area I knew that they were over pricing these properties AND doing a terrible job at marketing the properties with the descriptions & images. ( So I did the opposite by pricing this property correctly, Improving the images, making a video about the property and building a very descriptive ad copy.)What was the outcome?

It has been over two months and inventories are still unavailable.

Factor in the expected life of major improvements and their replacement cost.

@Ernie Sturzinger I guess to answer your question...not taking cash from the deal is perfectly fine and even a wise decision...this means the building needs to generate cash flow...you just need to leave it in reserves or make planned improvements...long-term equity is much more important than monthly cash flow.