@Meena MallikFrom my experience, securing financing for commercial real estate involves understanding your options, such as conventional loans, commercial loans, private lenders, or partnerships.

For instance, cities like Chicago are known for landlord-tenant laws that skew heavily in favor of tenants, and that risk should be baked into your underwriting.What’s your take on balancing short-term cash flow with long-term equity growth?

Sure you could do a money market or put it in an ETF or something, but this is one of the options where the balance "can't" go down or is extremely low risk while making a decent yield.

Make sure we're accounting for the appreciation, cost of the sale, cost of the purchase and one of my favorite factors, the risk.

Our biggest climate risks in central Texas are typically wind and hail, so anything of concern regarding the roof could get an applicant declined including trees too close to the roof surface, roof over 10 years old, etc.

Purchase the first one cash (to mitigate risk) and the second property with a loan.

To avoid the risk management/insurance that comes with tenants' wood fire use:I'm thinking to seal the chimney cap on roof and run a cord putting an electric Infrared heater fireplace in there, so they can still open the glass and get heat and watch TV over the mantle, but can't burn anything or have any flame.

In addition- if it's not working and the tenant takes legal action, the judge certainly isn't going to be on your side when you tell them a flooring contractor said it was warm in the house.This game is all about mitigating your risk by being proactive.

or perhaps a reverse build to suit where the data center operator controls the buildout and the planning etc.I've not been involved in a data center first hand but the central OH market is pretty data and warehouse heavy as far as developments go and to echo the posts here, the power requirements are wild, and the red tape to get that power to the site is often cumbersome. 

Buying a rental property while continuing to rent is another solid option, but it might come with more risk since you’d be juggling rent and a mortgage.