It is often cheaper to rent than to own a home.Rent Estate is essentially using real estate over the long term to create wealthIt’s less expensive to lease than claim a home, which is astonishing, shifting the tides in the US.This article does a fantastic job at reinforcing the strategy of using patience and calculation rather than panicking when crises strikes.

@Don Konipol I'm not a tax person, but that did strike me as alarming.

Contact a local architect/engineer for a detailed consultation specific to your project/locale.Your first strike was starting work without permits and have the Building Dept. issue you a stop work order.

No need for the loan to term out before foreclosing.I draft lender's instructions to the title company, telling escrow agent to update title commitment, make sure things match, add/strike endorsements to the lender's policy as needed, what to collect from borrower, and under what conditions to fund. 

If this was some random person and not a family member, more power to you in striking a deal that can help solve their problem and net you a profit.

It strikes me that discovering whether a property is in a natural hazard zone might be a task which is both:   a) time-consuming to do manually for each of the agent's listed properties, and   b) super-important for the agent to perform correctly, from a liability standpoint.I'd love the opinions of any real estate agents in this forum on this topic:  1) How much time do you spend on these disclosures for a single transaction, in terms of both due diligence/research/looking up records and also filling out the required disclosure forms? 

It strikes me as something a motivated seller would take on, an alternative to wholesale.  

I am guessing that at your experience level you may not want to strike a deal with the seller direct-I say that with all due respect Vincent.

In baseball you strike out with too many missed swings.

All my stuff looks amazing on paper but algorithms and calculations don’t account for so much of the true costs of running rentals .All you can do is have a pile of saved money for when Murphy strikes