@Alex Nelson, I just poured myself a glass of bourbon reading your story. 

Later this year two developers fr New York and Philadelphia and starting a 1 billion dollar project on the waterfront that includes two brand new glass tower building along with the American water HQ.

Demo the bathroom of a standard tub and install some tile and glass block abortion half finished when you finally evict the psuedo-owner/tenant (yes this one happened to me).In conclusion - I am sure many folks on BP will tout the $$$ they made from lease-options and rent-to-own, I know many in my REIA who have the same position - I have made a solid rental business for over a decade with a simple rental relationship.

Learn to stand tall, do your research, and develop a strategic plan.

We also have Jeep, Libey Glass (Next time you go out to eat look at the bottom of the glass for the "Libbey" stamp), and obviously we have Owens Corning and Promedica and Mercy health systems. 

If they did, how did they solve it besides putting bullet proof glass in place?

So you're sitting in a diner saying "MY GLASS IS HALF FULL!"

I have something aginst the LIST of people you will send the DMM to.As I mentioned before... boarded up houses, tall grass, notices on the door...

Everyone walking around is made out of glass.

If your current local real estate market had tons of obvious opportunities I might say otherwise, but trying to start your real estate portfolio investing out of state and deploying $200k seems like a tall order.