I outsourced a down on his luck guy to scrape up all the old flooring for like $75 and boy was that a deal when he scraped it up and found another layer underneath and had to scrape that up.

Because I am buying to hold as a rental, I can pay a little more than a Rehabber for the same property (I'm not looking to make a ton of profit up front).Here are the approximate numbers and rehab on a house we purchased in October last year (4 bed 2 bath, 1400sq.ft SFR):Purchase price: $110,000Improvements we made: interior and exterior paint, removed old carpet and refinished terrazzo underneath, tiled the Florida room, refaced cabinets, new set of appliances including washer/dryer, repaired window mechanisms, updated electrical, installed new 3 ton central AC system, replaced toilets, poured new concrete patio (very small), and cleaned up the landscaping, plus a bunch of other minor repairs.

The topography ( how hilly it is ) and the soil composition will determine how much of it is buildable allowing with density allowances for the zoning.

When I put the block box around it I ran a perforated pipe out 10 feet and made a small drain field to make sure no water can build up in it , and the soil is sand .

When I pulled it up, I started to get excited with the hardwoods underneath, but found that there were areas which had been "patched" with plywood, so could not really just refinish the floors.

Do they treat the soil below?

This will be determined based on the soil quality-import-export and required stormwater management.

Splitting it into 3 lots should be an easy one, as long as everything else looks good (sewer/septic, utilities, etc.) and the costs to improve are reasonable.In northern California to split a parcel that had septic it was necessary to do 'wet weather testing" to determine how much water the soil could hold before becoming saturated, etc.

Just a quick idea - you might consider a built-in bench (with lid for storage underneath) to create an eat-in area for the kitchen.

Without somewhat of a track record, I think getting any sort of 'big money' type financing (like not hard or private money) will be really hard if not impossible, but probably still worth trying to find out more about local requirements for institutions in your area.My credit line, as I said, is guidance line of credit that then has individual notes and deeds and trust underneath of it on individual properties that it funds.