It’s crucial to ensure that your cash reserves can cover not only the mortgage but also unexpected expenses during the remodel.The 30% housing rule is a helpful guideline to avoid overextending yourself, and ideally, you should be comfortable with your monthly housing costs even without rental income.

And, yes, in a lawsuit a judge might see that you are not treating your LLCs like a corporation and decide you do not deserve the protection that corporations provide.Sounds like you are being sold a lot of entities and nobody is telling you how to actually run them.I recommend this simple book from John Hyre on entities and asset protection to help.  

Hi @Ian Stuart Thanks for hosting this.

This helps.

This is a two-sided beast. 

Happy to talk through this in more detail and good luck with the out of state investing!

If they are professional, they can explain this quickly and easily.

This means the rental rates are average nothing to write home about, but the increase you'll get in appreciation is amazing, but not liquid until you sell. 

If there isn’t significant equity capture at this purchase price, and it’s not in a great location, this would be a pass for me.

The clients we work with who have found success letting us help them find highest and best use of properties, then we manage them for a year, and then pull out 60-70% of their money, and do it again - rather than waiting several years for a home run hit.