Perhaps there's ample supply in Columbus Ohio but what parts of Miami?

build a multifamily property and continue that strategy. building is a different strategy that allows you to still enter hte market below value. this is what we build in columbus ohio for investors it's a 3 story walk up infill that's about 24x40 and 2 bedrooms 1 bath stacked 3 times. it's identical to like 65% of apartments that are built. you'd need probably 100-150k in proceeds.

Hi Daniel, Columbus GA has properties much lower in price than the metro Atlanta area, you should do fine to learn your local market.

Now I’m looking into the Detroit and Ohio areas (Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus) since they seem to have growing populations and affordable properties under $200k as well.  

I personally started in my local real estate market in Columbus Ohio.

Cosmo, take a look a Columbus, GA.

Quote from @Devin James: In one of our development projects, the City staff asked us to remove 40 units from our concept plan.This wasn’t requested by the City Commission at a formal hearing, it was the opinion of the staff.Our original concept already proposed fewer units than the current zoning would have allowed.Here’s what erasing 40 units means:- 40 fewer homes for buyers- Over $1M in lost profit for our team- Fewer tax dollars and impact fees that could’ve benefited the City’s infrastructure & servicesWe gotta get betterEveryone wants more affordable housing, but not everyone wants to do what it takes to achieve it we never listen to the recommending bodies. we move for city approvals and work closely. the other thing we do is keep going back to the same groups over and over and over and over every month on the same agenda and make very small reductions like 2% or 4% and that reduces and beats them down eventually they accept what you want. it's just before beating a dead horse. we keep tabling until they give us something we all agree on then we go to vote. in our city in columbus we have to get recommendations but that's our strategy. we used to come out as aggressive as possible. we typically study developments in the area and keep it very similar in terms of density. we have a track record of very controversial projects and litigation and not taking no as an answer. after a year of that haha I can tell you it's not worth it. now we are more relationship based and buying the right kinds of plots of land. if the numbers don't work on the front end don't do the development. 

I am fairly new to real estate, but have been able to get a few properties which will help us own a block in downtown Columbus, OH.

Quote from @Devin James: Gross Margin is an important calculation for developers/builders.Gross Margin = Gross Profit / RevenueWe shoot for a 20% gross margin on our New Construction HomesReal #’s:Home Sales Price: $374KClosing Cost: $18,700Cost of Construction: $258KLand Cost: $30KGross Profit = $67K$67K/$374K = 17.9% Gross MarginCame slightly short of our goal of 20%Homes Values and Build Costs are constantly fluctuatingI wish we had a crystal ball build larger homes. average new build in our market is 2200 square feet, 4 beds, 3 baths, 2 car garage and sells for 515k. construction costs lower if design is good and find the median or average home sale price and push that up. my guess is you built too small. 347k is cheap. we target 429-479k price range in columbus ohio for single family homes and also only purchase close to urban core where premiums are 20% higher and we build smaller like 1500 sq ft where price per square foot goes up. 

We built a single family home version of a 2 bed 1 bath with surface parking at cost with no profit all in with land for 175k in newark ohio, a suburb of columbus ohio. when we push that to 3 units and closer to the city for our build to rent model the numbers go way better. a 30k slab for a single family home is 30k, a 30k slab for a triplex is 10k a door. we designed a 2 bed 1 bath design at 668 sq ft and it's very good layout even I would live there, but I would never build anything that small again. there's no economies of scale. you need density and shared lines, resources, shared roof shared slab, shared windows, etc the cost goes way down.