I would discourage you from servicing your own notes unless you're willing to take on unknown risk of legal compliance exposure.My advise reflects a CA bias.What starts as a little question can grow legs around here pretty easily.

There is too much unknown predicting the future and is much safer to look at the market and the numbers in the deal as they stand today IMO.Also, no matter how good the future potential for growth is or even the current numbers if the team you surround yourself with are not genuine and are shady, it is obvious that the investment won't be a success.Those are the 2 main things that I look for when investing.1) The team2) The current numbersThanks for reading and all the best moving forward.

J. you posted while I was composing....thanks, I thought you would be one to venture into the unknown as well.

In my start to flipping as I analyze properties the biggest unknown is the ARV.

This can get you a better price too, as the contractor is then not building in contingency for unknowns.

Even after drilling a 400 foot well you cannot guarantee there will be water (dry hole) or that the water quality will be satisfactory, so there is a small, but unknown risk when drilling a well and you will sign all sorts of paperwork with your driller when you get started as they will be covering themselves of this specifically.  

They don't have to be in the business to tell you if a rehab job is crappy or a neighborhood is slummy.You can vet pm companies all you want, get home inspections, etc but nothing beats physically looking at the quality of the rehab work and walking around a neighborhood and talking to other residents.Scammers or not, I would think that it's very difficult to go into an unknown market--without any connections who don't have ulterior motives--and make savvy decisions with your money.Start with the connections you do have and go there.

Certainly there are often unknowns associated with construction projects like this, so I wouldn't want to count on that timeline holding.If you've seen enough of the restaurants' recent financials to confirm that they've continued to do well in the past year or so (after the "Stonefield effect" would have fully kicked in) then presumably they're not heavily dependent on the popular-movie-going crowd from the wider area for their customer base, so there's probably nothing to worry about from the above project, and in fact, it should only help, eventually. 

Unfortunately, I don't understand how to estimate potential repairs/rehab, and many of the known and unknown expenses that will arise?

I've seen mortgage inquires have zero affect on borrowers.Shawn hit the nail on the head mortgage inquires during a specific time frame will only count once although they will show each time.Here is a link to thread where I just addressed this.https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/310884-credit-run-buy-unknown-sources-multiple-times For more info I'd suggest checking out myfico.com