Is Tracy hills an easy commute from major high paying jobs?

We suddenly had 2 homes and began exploring what our options were and that is when we discovered the intriguing world of REI and tapped into Bigger Pockets and Better Life Tribe, etc. to begin our education.In the time since his death and the probate process we have been paying his mortgage off and selling items from the home which we have been maintaining.

This means the owners will have to pay for the renovation.

That probably also varies by state.If it was administratively closed, you might had some significant expense to resurrect it - like paying 10 years of back fees and filing 10 years of back reports. 

The goal with this strategy is to have low living expenses as your tenants are helping you pay down your mortgage.

VA loan, very close to no money down, but we did pay a little out of pocket to coverHow did you add value to the deal?

Find a narrow area, then focus on improving your expertise/knowledge and you will have an informational edge that will pay huge dividends long term because unlike most people you will know what the true value of an asset is and can calmly pull the trigger when others are scared and can calmly not pull the trigger when others blinded by greed.

If you have cash its not hard to analyze a property and get the loan. when you don't have cash then that is where you have to do complicated things to pay for a property that will be profitable

Once i’m done renovating, I could refinance and pull the profit out and use that to pay the debt off and repeat the process. 

They denied smoking in the house and do not want to pay the cost of the remediation.