It would seem to me that in many of these situations, a straight-up flip would work well. Then again, what's the end goal here? To own the home for.....a rental? Or to turn around and profit from it.

I had several flips that I didn't know were flips when I first started. The second house I bought....well....'controlled' was a flip. Or maybe it was an assignment. But in any case; I had been trying to buy it from the guy, but he wouldn't budge, so I used all of my $1500 to buy another house. While that one was moving through the process of selling, the first guy came back. I couldn't 'buy' his house, so I took it under contract, ran an ad in the paper, then assigned my contract. Flip/assignement/whatever....it was pretty simple. My goal was never buy-and-hold, however.