It seems that less and less people are going in to or even considering trades, and the plight and challenge of finding consistently good contractors will continue to increase.  

They are publicly traded and have a $4 billion market cap with a portfolio over 30,000 properties.  

I had learned how to sell options, how to remodel my house, how  to day trade, how to start a self directed ira, I started a Physical Therapy clinic, mined bitcoin, made a few websites, I think I may have even learned how to raise chickens/honeybees/ and grow organic vegetables. 

I take the arbitrage loss as a trade off for emotional ease and I do it with my eyes wide open.If your eyes are open then there's absolutely nothing wrong with spending $226 per month to "buy emotional ease!"  

@Dave Saveri I see plenty of apartments like that where they are trading double what they went for in 2012-2014.

I am going to update this thread as a diary and ask for help with decisions along the way.First order of business is we need to make a list of rehab items and budget.

It should be broken out by trades, and can be done further by labor and material of each trade (this is not even 100% the case always), but beyond that there won't be a ton of detail.I worked on the management end of a GC, and our bids weren't that detailed.

Maybe FIFighter is meant to be a stock investor or something.Another Blog I follow is 'cash flow diaries' http://www.cashflowdiaries.com/ This guy has 4 or more turnkey in Indianapolis, he loves it and after owning them some time, he even moves to Indianapolis.

If after you did a deal, we may have an argument to deduct it.Education that qualifies you for a new trade or business is non-deductible.

From speaking with another (actual) investor, I learned that this group operated heavily in the Stockton and Sacramento area.Bottom line: if you come across someone who tells you that you have to pay to learn from them, I would suggest to continue looking - it is possible that you may learn something from the "education," but, in higher likelihood, you'd only end up deeper in debt, or worse, in a bad RE deal that they could not find anyone else to sell to.There are plenty of honest people still around, many are successful and some of those have blogs and podcasts that you can learn from for free (although, they still seem to have something to sell you, but it is a fair trade off.)