Then, have someone mask the room, and get that boy a bucket of paint and a brush!

Honestly, if the zoning "by right" scenario only allows for certain types of home to be built on that residential property I would underwrite for that scenario first and make sure you have a viable project and 'Plan B", because going for a tiny home community without a plan B has a very high risk, and with 5 acres... you can find yourself upside down pretty quickly once you start adding all the soft cost / hard cost to your underwriting.I would recommend talking to the planning department, ask them if any projects like the one you're thinking about has come across their tables, and how open planning and city council would be for such a product. 

(I got underbid by like $5k on a Power project and I explicitly brought to their attention all the expensive stuff they seemed not to be taking into account, but they brushed it aside.

I just brush it off and move onto the next.

Brush up on California and Chico landlord laws and rules.

I feel like the one I have been using could be brushed up. 

We could easily rent it as-is without even picking up a paint brush, but we specialize in higher end rentals.My parents will be lending us about 30% of the total purchase price, as we didn't quite have the cash we needed to get into the best school districts.

So can we make any broad brush conclusions that apply equally to all areas?

From there, you'll have to go around the home to see if there are any soft spots in the subfloor before laying over any new floor over it.

When you are actually raising money for a specific deal you have under contract, raise twice as much through soft commitments (commitments where they have not wired funds yet / non-legally binding commitments) because you will find many people back out when it comes to actually wiring the funds (at least on your first deal).You should start speaking to and interviewing syndication attorneys (feel free to DM ME for a list of syndication attorneys).