You are a real piece of work. 

Is in there, but a great thing you can do now is get your "core 4" figured out - agent/lender/manager/contractor - obviously you can adjust this and do one of the pieces yourself (self-manage for example) or don't need a contractor if you do only turnkey etc but getting this nailed down early is key

A client of mine recently invested there and raves aboutt the ease of finding solid contractors who stick to the budget.One piece of advice: before jumping into any market, spend time understanding the local economy, demand drivers (like job growth and population trends), and the landloard laws.

Any thoughts on the RE prof piece? 

Those can be had for 3-5 bucks a piece after summer so easy to replace.Waffle makers.

As I piece this all together, I can’t help but feel we’re standing at a crossroads.

I wasted too much time trying to piece it all together and when you're in different states it's all the more challenging to make sure everything is legit.

While both involve finding and properly securing a site and bringing it to full entitlement, the ground-up process includes the land piece but gets way more involved and complex to execute.The full "Monty" for ground-up development needs to include financial literacy, an explanation of metrics, and how they work.

Most affordable developers will pay more for a given piece of property but will want to lock it up for two years under a financing contingency so that they can go through two rounds in the event their project doesn’t get awarded on their first round.  

That's actually one of my pieces of advice for you... learn how to do your own book keeping so you know your P&L in real time at all times. 8) Hard to say without knowing the value of the place, CC&Rs, as well as any HOA fees/dues.