Hi Joesph, It’s awesome that you took the leap into fix-and-flips and already have your first deal hitting the market soon—huge milestone!

What we found was only one other person contracted under $200 per square foot for clients and they also built within the city of columbus. the numbers have a much higher premium the closer you get to downtown. if you can't get the numbers to work my recommendation would be to get closer to downtown. we do build to rent development and single family home development and every line item is broken out. on the triples we have to build exterior staircases etc there are some things you can't really understand unless you build a lot. hope that helps but no one is going to build you for 110 a square foot. the lowest cost homes in our market at cost without a profit barely dip into 140 a square and we are in one of the cheapest construction markets and states in the country. 

I started real estate investing by house hacking and then getting into rentals from there.

The Birmingham market has been showing steady growth, with increasing demand for both single-family homes and multi-family properties.

The investors I know finding properties on the MLS are making 30+ offers a week, embarassing offers, in hopes of finding 1 or 2 properties a month.Others are door knocking, cold calling, spending money on mailers to find off market properties.  

If I put all of my eggs in one basket (Florida in this case), paid off property and a hurricane blows everything away, FEMA is nowhere to be found and the insurance companies take years to pay what little claims they actually do pay, I suffer through it in a blown out house.

My first duplex was a turnkey, off market property.

Have you decided what market will you be focusing on, and do you have a particular strategy in mind? 

The first house is the easiest. 

It was on the market for a long time because it didn't qualify for conventional financing will it being unlivable.