@Dee Jay Chicago is a great city to invest but it can be hard for long distance investors to get their footing.

I am obviously new to this whole thing, and I am considering "house hacking" my first rental property as a means to get my foot in the door.

Many people go with them because the application process allows for one to not set foot in their office.

After all we are taught to buy low and sell high...Despite all that, I just bought a facility for .50 cents on the dollar ($19 per square foot) and have doubled its value in under 105 days...from $465,000 to $1,000,000.....in under 4 months...in a "seller's market"....The point here is that every facility will have its own "market" and savvy investors can make money throughout the market's cycle.

Currently old houses in my area are going for nearly the same price per sq foot as new houses. 

I agree this seems a bit high for such a basic checklist, for a 900 sq foot home, so naturally I'm wondering if anyone has an inspector they recommend that's more reasonably priced?

For this project we had to wire in two 6 foot grounding rods outside of the property prior to electrical inspection.

In parts of my market, the price per sq foot on the multi-family properties is higher than the single family properties.

Using the retail/MF example, to determine the value of the land for each element, you would need to figure out how many sq. ft. of what type of retail, which would define the land value (per acre or square foot) that could be supported which will be determined by the rents that would be generated against their capitalized value.

2 - For a non-flipper with no connections or bulk jobs, how much should I look to pay to renovate a 1000 square foot 3 BR apartment in that "flip" style that is all over Zillow (floors, bathrooms, paint, etc)?