With this formula, I've only made money on my exit.

You can't plug "thousands" into a formula to estimate your MAO.He wants to sell it without a contract. 

@Dante’ Wray good luck on your journey as well.I am not qualified to give tax advice - I am an employee of a licensed management company and have no experience in self-managing any rentals, nor am I an accountant.There are many guides to self-management out there, including resources here on BiggerPockets, but there is not one formula or schedule for you to follow.

Invariably there will be some sheet or part of a formula that is pulling from the wrong thing and I'm tracing things back to where the error started. 

I've absolutely seen that some lenders can do that, and FHA guidelines allow it too which makes it even better, but pulling the trigger on the property would still be very difficult for me right now due to credit issues—if I had even 2 more months I'd be singing a different song, but alas. 

The already have Formula 1, MOTO GP, and a big outdoor amphitheater for concerts.  

The return is that the service calls I got from tenants of 5 rental properties is less than repair/maintenance requests from HOA of 1 property (only 1 out of the 5 properties has HOA)200 hours of labor, $50K out of pocket, 14% ARV, $10K cash flow and $20K appreciation -- that is 60% return according to your formula.

You all remember that old song, don't you?

He's uses a formula uncovered 5 years ago while he attended an investor conference focused on identify "positive cash flow" properties.   

We knew walking in that we would have to do a lot of the simple work ourselves so that we could renovate the property completely and still get cash out when we refinance… The formula is simple, our lender will allow us to cash out 70% of the property after renovation value, in this case the property projects out to be worth $320,000… That means we can get a total of $224,000 out.