Buy Land and Build 2 Houses V/S Syndication/Other

[Milind Mathur]

Hi there,

I am looking to start my journey around investing in real estate. I was wondering what are the pitfalls with buying land and constructing two houses on top of that in a good locality. Looks like some killer land in my area can be had for around 500k and I'd expect the construction for two mirror image houses to take another 700k. Built houses in the a few neighborhoods I looked at, were going for > 1.3M. 

I understand that building the house comes with challenges of dealing with the city permits, architects for design of home, financing differences around loan interest rates and in general more active decision making. This seems super profitable. Can you help understand what I may be missing/over simplifying/over looking? This is something that I have not thought of to be part of conventional wisdom.

PS: I live in Seattle WA and home prices are going through the roof like most other places in the US.

I live in Seattle WA.

[Julie Marquez]

@Milind Mathur it can be profitable. Helps to have a solid contractor as I can think of a million things that could go wrong. I'm not sure the size or finish level, but $700k to build two homes seems low. $700k for one home sounds right in the Seattle area.