The purchase agreement should layout a time frame to complete some of these "due diligence" items.You will need a boundary survey and title commitment to verify there are no liens or encumberances on the property.You will want to hire a geotechnical engineer to verify the soil is suitable for building an apartment building.You will need an environmental engineer to make sure there are no contaminants (asbestos, mercury, lead, etc.) on the site, as well as wetlands and/or endagered speices.If you need to rezone the property we may want to consult an attorney and/or civil engineer to help with that.Depending on how many units you intend to build the city may require a traffic study be completed to determine the impacts to the streets and intersections.This is typically how we start a new site and it is a very general list of items.

If it is pier and beam, you are in luck because it is much easier to fix if there are inside issues, if it is slab, interior piers are the suck but still nothing to make you run from a project... the walls are easily fixed AFTER the foundation is fixed and sits for 7 to 10 days, depending on the soil.

Also, if there was old carpet there that you needed to rip up first, are there any of the leveling problems with what's underneath the carpet, that you might encounter with trying to put in ceramic tile?

I have to make another trip up tomorrow to the unit.The pipe connecting directly to underneath the sink broke at the bottom and the pipe length I need means cutting the new pipe and a new 1/2inch connector to fit.

The reason being that the houses were older than I'm accustomed to and they use different building methodologies up there, so I wasn't able to assess things like the well, foundations on clay soil, rubber roofs, etc.FWIW, I was over budget by about $25K on the first Milwaukee rehab -- about $10K of that was stuff a really good inspector probably could have caught (structural/framing issues), but the inspector missed it and so did I.

That's simplistic, you can make money with condos, but I like to own the dirt underneath.

It was also stating that the structure was situated in an "AREA OF ACTIVE SOILS".

Can't say Always, and it depends on your location, but TX is known for highly expansive clay soils, which expand dramatically when wetted.

To date I've had 1. the plug of a window air conditioner eaten by a large puppy that resembled an elephant, 2. a porch swing partially consumed by the same galoot,  3. flower beds totally destroyed because the dirt is, oh so cool to lay in in the summertime,  4. a carpet scratched down to the subfloor underneath by a dog left in a bedroom and either bored or going through a panic,  5. 

Also I put a tag line on the envelope underneath the return address, like 'bail out plans available', 'cash for your equity - any condition.'