No matter which path you take in real estate, surrounding yourself with professionals from different fields—contractors, lenders, brokers, investors.

@Stuart Bartle - If you are interested in Chicago and looing for some boots on the ground and building you team...I am happy to make some connections with lenders, agents, contractors, etc.Do you have a specific area of Chicago that you are looking in?

Do you have your contractors set up? 

I also have great contractors that are familiar with what prices are.I guess all in all it boils down to experience.

To do so, I need an initial team who can cover the following aspects of these projects:- Wholesaler- Contractor (Inspection oriented)- Equity Partners (Project Incentives)Once the deals are in place, the financing support will be through personal capital for upfront costs, with the intention to raise private capital and include hard-money lenders as-needed.

300k purchase + 10-15k closing + 80k remodel + 5k for refinance costs. 80k remodel number I got from my father who is a general contractor in the area. 500k ARV x .80% refi (because it would be my primary residence) = 400k minus 15k closing, 80k remodel, 5k refi cost = 300k my original purchase price.

Do you recommend using a general contractor, or would it be more cost-effective to handle it myself with subcontractors?

@Richard Schubert- Yeah, I'm glad I brought the engineer out because 2 foundation contractors looked at it previously. 

It does give some great data but would need to verify with a local agent/contractor/property management company etc 

Quote from @Gary Aragon: Quote from @Rick Albert: Our electricity is already separate and we designed our ADU to be all electric so no gas.