All the high comps that had sold in the area were small horse farms with cleared pasture land.

Before the cart gets too far ahead of the horse here, have you checked out the finances and credit history of the lease/purchase wanna be?  

This question is "the cart before the horse" since your title is raising Private Money but your questions revolve around a Private Placement.

Increase given today may not be in effect until Aug 1 meaning increase (if 30-day notice is applicable) would be effective Sept 1.My guess is that MA Winters start stalling market rentals in Oct which means you may be risking a very long vacancy window if either or both tenants choose to vacate. 

I have a tenant in a house that has a Harley sitting in the one stall garage and parks both their cars in the driveway. 

The French eat horse meat, but Americans rarely.

But a deferrment can stall it.   

I think the only thing the 2% rule kills is the dead horse around here. :)

Some of the prefab shower stalls are relatively inexpensive.If you are adding a shower head to this set up or keeping one that is already there, then I would tile to the ceiling... keep the bull nose and tile up with white tile only.  

33K in student loans, about 11k on plastic (wedding/honeymoon/school), plus houseMy experience in real estate is limited to spending time with my grandfather growing up.He had several rental houses and would always be working on them.As I grew up and paid more attention to the business side of his work I realized that he was working just to stay busy and not working to create more income.His end goal was always to create more income but he was always distracted by the job of remodeling and updating.He has been my mentor and main father figure for years but now it is time I “upgrade” to someone capable of guiding me in the direction I want to go.I will always love my grandfather but his business sense is not one I need to follow.My goals in real estate are to create a “four hour work week” (gotta love the Tim Ferriss way of life) by a combination of buy and hold and flips.I hope to use this method to create a stable business and then move into apartment complexes.After lurking on this site I have learned about the different rules needed to ensure profit out of each.In my farm area there are many MLS deals that fall into these numbers.Now it is just about raising funds.I would love to find some Sub2 deals.Famous FourFavorite real estate book Never read one.Bigger Pockets Favorite business book Poke the Box by Seth Godin, 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, and No More Mondays by Dan Miller Hobbies include working on cars and spending time with friends and family.These are very important to me and I do not get enough time with my desk job with either.What is thing that sets apart successful investors from those that fail Getting back up on the horse after failing and not letting friends and family tell you that being an investor is a stupid idea.