It's those types of deals where I would argue that higher-cost education might be justified, as it would be cheaper to spend money on the education than to screw up even a single deal.

I’d argue the opposite. 

Things to consider: daily internal operations, external branding and operations, lending, in addition to inside out *legal protection and outside in** legal protection, privacy/anonymity/identity protection and security...Prevention measures at different levels, preventing the attack from being initiated vs preventing the attack (lawsuit) being successful vs reducing the damage of a successful attack.... there are many elements and I see people pick one and argue about it without looking at the whole

This is one of the reasons why you can often get a higher ROI overseas but, from a risk point of you, you could argue that the downside risk is higher in the US, depending on the location of course.

Although I would argue that using a duplex valuation is inaccurate due to market forces.

So being conservative we would say you gain $46k in equity ($1.15m times 4%) plus cash flow (which I would argue is basically nothing after vacancy, repairs, capex) plus principle portion of debt pay down (you’ll have to look at your statements and figure this out).

i do think it's challenging, though, for a brand new investor with zero experience to jump right into a huge rehab with a contractor they've never worked with before.the contractor might want a larger up-front payment to mitigate their own risk, and they're not going to be interested in any kind of fancy nonsense like a 'penalty' when they know a new investor has never managed a large project before.i have also found that some contractors, including reputable ones, don't even want to share itemized bids because they just don't want to have to argue about the individual line items. 

They will argue the fact that they have are only behind by one month and that they have always paid (25% of our tenant base is late).

Chief Seeks Toss Of Nonperforming Loan SuitThe CEO and manager of multiple mortgage loan servicing companies urged a Washington federal court to throw out a lawsuit accusing the companies of selling a portfolio of loans that weren't outstanding, arguing that the presiding court lacks personal jurisdiction, in part because he's an Illinois resident.

If either argues about the approach you can simply fall back on the 'law'.