Permits in Maui take 325 days IF you put the pedal to the metal and have your architectural plans, cost breakdowns, and NEVER change a thing.

So I would do the work, get the experience, and the customer would just pay for materials.

And remember, CPI of nearly everything is higher every single month, which permeates into materials, services etc… that are necessary for building / renovating homes.

The fittings also had a lot of issues with the o-ring melting out on the hot water side or during installation as well as the metal degrading quickly due to the zinc reaction to water.

Opening a credit card through Lower/Home Depot is a start because if you are doing a rehab and you can group your orders into large enough dollar amounts you can take them to the pro-desk and get them to quote you pricing which might save you 10-20% off retail just like a contractor ordering materials.

@Sara JohnsonI would get some light gauge metal studs and just frame right in front of the brick wall and not even attach to it for support.

The cost of the materials was $1,500, and including labor I’d estimate this cost me about $3,000.The property manager never ran this by me or gave me an indication these project would be completed.Our service agreement is clear that written consent is needed when costs exceed $1,000 and in this instance these were not repairs and requirements needed to rent the property.

You must spend more than 750 hours during the tax year in real property trades or businesses in which you materially participate.b.

So noobs often fall into the trap of looking at just lower and lower priced neighborhoods in an effort to make the numers work.And the Rehab-R is deceptivly easy to say, but takes 3-6 months and a lot of time from the investor to design, source materials, handle paperwork and supervise the project. 

You maybe able to do a cost seg(needs to be done by a professional) and get bonus deprecation BUT you maybe not able to use it since you would need to be real estate pro or materially participating via the short term rental loophole to do so against your active income.