Sounds about right. I live in north Florida and anything move in ready that doesn't need a bunch of work is over 200k. Mobile homes on an acre are listing close to 200k, it's insane.
If you look for really old houses, they usually won't pass an inspection for an FHA loan. So you can get into real old houses, built with premium better quality materials, for cheap if you can save $200k
Saving $200k is hard. I only save about $10k to $15k per year at the rate I earn and spend money.
So you have to get creative. Like live in a mobile home or pull behind camper for a couple years. Better than paying rent. Keep your expenses to $1000 per month and save the rest.
Keep your primary job but get an easy second job that you don't mind much, or a second job that gets you around hot women.
If you do need to take a loan, I'd go for a small house on the most land. Then just build additions or upgrade the house in the future.
To make money house flipping you have to estimate where the next booming town will be in 10 years. There's already big jew corporations trying to predict this with their huge data sets on real estate so the competition is stiff.
Serious question, does anyone really care about living in a home where someone got murdered years ago? Assuming it's been fixed and cleaned to the point where you wouldn't know unless your were told about it, what's the issue? Is it just the superstitious vibes?