So if your big into water sports, living in the desert could have all the profit in the world but it's going to be miserable hell and odd's are after some months the profits wont matter.

I’m Jorge Vazquez, a licensed broker, investor, property manager, and coach of the Property Profit Academy.

Excuses mean more profit.    

MAYBE, if you live in the town, and are VERY handy, and open an appliance, hvac, roofing company and are willing to travel to the 30 closest cities (since you won’t be profitable even if you get all the business in a city that size.) then maybe you’d do ok.

Knowing your options make better and more profitable deals1.

I was told the investor pays to lease out the entire flat for 6-12 months and then sub-leases the individual rooms for a profit.

I would assume that you'd just simply sell each individual lot to the developer at a set lot price such that your cost to purchase the raw land and improve it to buildable lots was worth the proposed profit per lot.  

In your second post you recommend hiring "a legit STR manager and pocket[ing] the profits".

Option C: Sell and cash out.Pros: get 10 years rents profit in a day.

In other words, the cap rate becomes fairly meaningless upon transfer.Your job is to assess whether or not you can make a good profit after buying the asset at whatever the sale price is.