Over the course of a year my wife and I fixed it up, rented to friends, ate peanut butter and jelly, did everything we could.

Don't think I ate until dinner, and was up at 6:30 ready to call the mortgage company. 

I worked long hours (60-70 hours a week), I gave up a lot of things (cable television, expensive cell phones, satellite radio, my gym membership), I didn't go out on the weekends (I worked), and I rarely ate at restaurants.

While I have never lived in properties such as this, my parents rented and I wouldn't exactly say I ate from a silver spoon.

Ppty tax in most big cities (SAT, DIA, IAH, AUS) runs about 3%!

@Angel Acosta that is a lot of profit ate up just on getting the loan, me personally I would look for other options possibly finding a private money lenders.

Honestly I'd much rather see them get their financing and/or tax incentives and/or DIA grants over any of the other potential large-scale downtown area projects (Shipyards, Healthytown, Landing redevelopment), as the Laura Trio impact would be far more effective per dollar than any of the others. 

Several items were not finished including a missing gutter, unfinished trim, and completely covered a bathroom vent (the duct now vents into my attic).quite a few columns of nails completely miss the joist (I was able to see this after opening up the interior)I ate the cost of two additional dumpsters because he didn't know what size he needed.I'm not going to eat any additional cost due to his shoddy business operation.

While we are done carrying the property for a long time and taking a huge discount due to low ball appraisal ate a hefty chunk of profits.

The don't write about the flip that cost $100k and then ate up another $50k in repairs and was worth $120k when they finished.