Think a big component is amount of available rooms where people could sleep.

@Anna Bee Interest rates are simply one component of a real estate transaction. 

Once you get an idea of the costs associated with each component then you can look at a property and do a basic estimate of the costs to see if its worth your time.

Without any experience and a track record there's few lenders that will loan a person money, let alone release funds upfront and trust you, unless you have something to put up of equal value for security. these are valid concerns.. with HML in the past learning their lessons about advancing rehab money until components are in place.reality though is if you are going to be stuck because a draw is 5k short.. then you probably wont get the loan in the first place. you need to have a lot of liquidity to be in the fix and flip business.. 

One of the main components I would like to include is education; notifications in legislative changes and what private landlords need to know in regards to State regulations, in real-time.My question for you is: have you used any digital application to organize your business and if so, what did you like/dislike about it?

Roofs are expensive, but a house with a new roof and AC in 5 years is likely worth more than a house with those components in poor condition today.

There should absolutely not be any structural component to this project, but if you're going to cap it off, be sure it doesn't go anywhere...... :-)I would think this project would run less than $500, maybe only a couple hundred.....

They knew the monthly payment component wasn't reliable, so they purchased them, and unloaded them for the "cash profit today" option, as fast as possible, rather than the longer term "collect monthly payments" option (which, if there are going to be monthly payments, is generally more profitable [especially if they were ARMs that go up in interest rate & payment over time{1}], that's why everyone wants you to sign up for a monthly subscription for this or that).

With this in mind, I am thinking that the less-than-stellar cash on cash ROI might not be as important as long term benefits.And would a bigger down payment be advantageous or a detriment, since the lower monthly mortgage payment would come at the cost of tying up capital that could be invested elsewhere?

There's a lot of new construction coming up, but it won't be too detrimental to existing I don't think.As was said previously, what would happen if you have a vacancy for 6 months (or longer) while you place a tenant?