Building vs buying cape coral

[Michael Loffredo]

Hello everyone. I'm a  fairly new real estate investor and still consider myself a newbie. So long story short I'm about to finish up an existing real estate investment and will have a decent amount of cash to invest once it's done. I live out of state in NY, but I own a lot of land in 33909 my father owns a house in cape coral and a few lots of land there as well so I am fairly familiar with the area. I am trying to find investment opportunities out of state, so I was contemplating building a house down there as a rental and see if it would be cost effective vs buying and renovating, or even just buying a turn key home. I was even contemplating foreclosed homes.

My father is a contractor so we are familiar with doing renovations and home repair if I were to buy and renovate, so I would probably be doing all renovation if I were to go that route. I would also be the g.c. if I were to build my own house which I don't think should be a problem. If I remember correctly one house can be built per year before you would need to get a g.c. license, correct? My father and I also have connections with some contractors down there that can help me along, but that aside my questions are:

a.) is there anyone that has built a house in cape coral (or SW Florida in general) and what was the cost/sq ft to build?

b.) Is it cost effective to build a house vs buy a house?

c.) Is there anything else I need to consider ?

d.) recommendations on what I should do

Also any other information or considerations that anyone has to offer is always great. Thanks in advance.