Is this kind of just a fly by night gamble type of deal?

I'm an investor and agent based in the city focusing on Logan Square, East Humboldt and UK Village. 

The only way this becomes good is appreciation, and to me that's a gamble.

We usually sell our foreclosure properties for a profit but thinking you could turn $500 into $80,000 on one deal is not investing it's gambling.

I'm no good with a hammer, not interested in flipping which seems too much like gambling at this point in my life.

If we ran it for a year and worst-case a renter who's unhappy with us attempting to raise/normalize rents reports the leaking roof, we could be stuck with MAJOR repairs that we can't yet afford, or who knows, a condemned building because there's mold in that roof/attic/walls that have been leaking.It's discouraging - we could walk away and take our $25k and go 20% down on a duplex that cash flows $300 a month, or we gamble on this place where the cash flow is approaching $1.5k per month after budgeting conservatively with the bigger pockets calculators. 

I live in the United States, but spend a good deal of time in the UK now.

It's quite a gamble.

It also makes a HUGE assumption that you can access this gained equity through refi at the same rate as when you started the loan (highly unlikely and as I stated, math is math and statistics are statistics so why gamble on an unknown factor!).

Your play here is gambling on appreciation hoping you make your money that way which is just that gambling.