The prohibited transactions are a fairly complicated topic.  

We are fairly new to the area, but my wife is a great real estate agent, so we were able to negotiate a pretty decent deal for what we believe is a value added home.  

Hi Nick,I'm fairly new here and your posting is very interesting to me.

I am flexible and willing to do what is fair and common practice.

Cody has some really good tips, however the strategies he mentioned are fairly common and might not work as well in our market.

Once I've gotten a fair amount and I have some income coming in every month I wanted to go bigger and invest that into apartments.

But since you asked, I do have some fairly strong ones.

Keep in mind that many companies have salespersons to do their estimates (and @Nicole W. and @Russell Naylor) and may not ever step foot on the roof (if only for insurance reasons).Unless there is something pretty unique, estimating roof work is fairly simple.  

I too am fairly new to real estate investing and am super excited about the opportunities.

I have a few properties in that area so I am fairly familiar.