Underwriting: Fully transparent and is it actually conservative?

Personal choice but imo being conservative is a good thing, especially with a family depending on you.

Here is 3 scenarios: conservatively projected low/medium/ and scenario 3 is actual recent net returns  (unlikely repeatable right now) I'm looking for alternative ideas to deploy $150-200k down payment on a much larger investment than a 1br house, so I can play the appreciation game as well as the income game.

> 600 a month in maintenance and cap ex is pretty aggressiveI suspect you meant conservative.  

Every single one of these are awesome points; I wanna 2nd especially the points on SAVING as much as possible, and being conservative in projections.

Hello Steve, Most conservative option I would say is to house hack.

I would suspect others may find this conservation very useful as well. 

I'm working on projects in florida and ohio. entitled or unentitled is a big difference. we typically look for land in larger tracts in columbus ohio for under 50k per acre. that's mostly rural land that is then entitled through engineering and zoning variances, a huge money maker if you don't do it. entitled land depends on density. lowest I've seen is typically 6 dwelling units per acre and highest I've seen in suburban markets might be 26. i think there is a lot of missing things to answer your questions like how big of projects, but I can give you a very recent lot we featured for investors who build a stacked triplex with us around Orlando and other markets in florida. it was a 43k piece of land on about .3 acres. through planned development you can get a duplex approved it was in poinciana in Osceola county. that's on the small side and it's hard to find land and it wouldn't really increase in value there but that's about 5k or less in fees to get that done. so all in 50k for a 2-3 unit. so 25k a door would be a good price to look at. normally as you buy at scale it gets much cheaper because you are doing all the value and creating something from rural land or wetlands, etc. entitled land typically sells for 11k-13k per door I would say on average in suburban markets on a national average. that is extremely difficult to track but we work with groups in land entitlement all over the country who co -develop with us and we create benchmarks that's more of an internal conservative and we push high density and multifamily to maximize profits on the exit once the project is entitled. 

Over the many years, I've seen these things destroy a lot of people.IMO for a short time they provide happy days, but inside them is the shark that will "come a callin' ".As a very conservative investor, these are not on my Swiss Army Knife, but I recognize the Risk/Reward situations they are used for.

Additionally you want to model out a vacancy period at the end of each lease term, to be conservative. 6-12 month vacancy factor is common.