Newbie-The Plan-Advice Wanted

[Amanda Barnes]

I inherited a couple of rentals which has been managed by a great property management company for the past dozen years.  This is the extent of my experience.  

I own land just outside of Raleigh, some on both sides of I-40 just off of an exit.  My husband wants to build houses on some of the land for more rentals.  In this area, 3/2 starter homes rent for about $900-$1000/month.  He would like to do 5 more houses for a total of 7.

We have about 100K we can comfortably start with, and we can put about 60K from his salary each year toward the builds.  I prefer to use cash as we go.  Advice on this line of thought?

He has done lots of rehab work "for fun" and he wants to hire a builder to build the shells and do most of the finishing ourselves, hiring out the things that we can't or don't want to do.  We plan on one house every 6-9 months.  Thoughts?

We are meeting with our property manager this week to get advice about the rental market, then have meetings set up with 2 builders that say they are willing to do shells next week.  Advice?

We have no idea what type of insurance we need to build the houses.  Actually, we are so new to this we don't even know.... what we don't know!!  So any and all advice is welcome.