The contractor will be your best resource to understand cost of the design; the earlier you identify value engineering opportunities, the cheaper it will cost to incorporate (Google: ‘Macleamy Curve’).

Create a simple spreadsheet or written list to compare the features of each and identify the ones that align with your requirements.

--This can help identify potential marketing challenges.

Hello friends,I've identified a piece of land in New York.

If anyone has any tips or tricks to a first-timer, feel free to leave a reply (especially curious about standard practices for identifying deals).

It makes the whole process that much smoother.Once you have gotten set up and discussed your goals with your lender and your Realtor has given you the rundown of strategies here in the Denver market, it will be easy to identify where you are heading.

Get a deep understanding of what the income and expense for the properties are and try to identify future capital expenditures that might need to be reserved for.

Fannie Mae's guidelines verbatim are as follows:Must be occupied by the borrower for some portion of the yearMust be suitable for year round occupancyBorrower must have exclusive control over the propertyMust not be rental property or a timeshare arrangement (this has the following disclaimer in the guidelines:  If the lender identifies rental income from the property, the loan is eligible for delivery as a second home as long as the income is not used for qualifying purposes, and all other requirements for second homes are met (including the occupancy requirement above).Cannot be subject to any agreements that give a management firm control over the OCCUPANCY of the propertyThis means that as long as you intend to occupy the property some portion of the year, you could absolutely rent it while you are not using it. 

The gentleman earlier pointed out, rightfully so, that three days in a room with Tim and other high-level investors will not give you all the knowledge and tools to identify, negotiate, structure, finance and, close deals.

Obviously paying interest on underutilized capital is sub-optimal but when factoring in the cumulative proposed transactional savings, the annual total interest cost could be equivalent or lower than the net of an alternative home equity line of credit on the same principal loan amount.One 'hack' could be to delay the actual closing of the DSCR loan until a quality purchase prospect is identified and/or near under contract.