A buddy of mine up in Omaha once inherited a tenant who refused to let inspectors through the door.. ended up pushing back renovations for a month and racking up costs like you wouldn’t believe.

I started a property management company in 2017 and am now managing almost 800 doors and 6 construction crews.If I could do it all over again, I would have spent a little more time setting up business systems prior to jumping in. 

That's your job. you should be inspecting the rental at least once a year and looking for things like this that could cause problems.I'm curious why your caulking is completely gone if this is "newer" construction.

Besides being super responsive and motivated, he's our local expert for construction lending.

But if your goal is to cashflow positive from the Day 1, you may find it very challenging due to current day interest rates, high cost of construction and the fact you won't have the efficiencies of a seasoned developer building at scale.

2) How much do you actually know about construction?

I have 2 options:- finance the construction pre-selling the apt, and take my profits (expected to be around 700K pre-tax); or- finance the construction with a 6-7%/year loan (collateral = my house), keep the 10 units, and once the building is completed in 24 months, rent them for circa 180K/ year gross.

Any constructive advice would be much appreciated. 

Lots of research first through Zillow , real estate agent, and family members led us to Queen Creek and New home constructions.

There’s a lot of construction, which could hurt both prices and vacancy rates.