If you dont pay the big bucks for the skip the lines your waiting hour to hour and half and the rides simply are not worth it to me.. but hey I am grandpa ..

More bang for your buck at launch, no equity but it gets you started. you can roll the profits into a purchase at a later date. good luck

cost me 400 bucks including buying the water heater. 

Check out Milwaukee, WI the water is warm and the market is hot :)

Make a mistake with a house hack and you might experience some inconveniences and lose a few thousand bucks, but you can usually survive.

I would also like to not have to spend a million bucks on a primary residence there, everything here is expensive and I question why I don't cash out and move elsewhere, simplify my life, quit my W2 job, etc. 

Accept the fact that your renovation is imperfect and move on to a more productive issue in life.More expensive fix: Install a plastic surround (or whatever kind of surround that makes you happy) and spend the bucks to fix the siding so that it looks like the window was never there.Most awesomest fix: Alter and/or move the header and install a 4' x 15" tempered glass transom window with a PVC frame and tile or granite trim above the point where water can reasonably enter the framing.

I get it .. but I also know how tough this business is and 97% of the people simply are not going to buy their way to success.. just like 90% of the newbies that post on BP will do exactly NOTHING in real estate we all get fired up.. but there is only so much of it to go around.. its FAR harder than it looks and it does either take some real good innate skills or lacking that some good liquidity so you can buy into the market.. thats why the Vanilla rental house game is so huge right now.. anyone who can fog a mirror can understand.. buy a rental put a tenant in it.. collect rent... past that when your talking about these more complicated transactions pretty tough to have no experience and just pay a few bucks and your going to be knocking down 250k profits.. its no different than the wholesaler guru who pitches making 20 to 40k a month .. can U yes how many do maybe 1% who try... or the guru who teachs flipping and making 50k per flip one a month... again how many can do that not many... one they don't think it through.. if your going to do 50k flips and one a month and you have 6 to 9 month cycle you need to buy 6 to 9 projects before you turn one.. how many starting out can do that.it would be more realistic to say hey start with one in 6 months then do 2 and maybe in five years your doing 10 to 15 a year.and or it really depends on markets... but gurus talk like all markets are interchangeable and they simply are not.

Saved me a pretty buck.

I'm also getting a small monthly management fee on the back end (a few hundred bucks).Anyone got any advice?