. - If you come across the same tax expert on multiple threads, and you consistently like their responses, send them a PM via Bigger Pockets or contact them via the contact information listed at the bottom of their comments.IMPORTANT: we're prohibited from offering our services to you, both publicly and privately - unless YOU initiate the conversation from your end.Still, some people choose to ignore these Bigger Pockets rules and will send you an unsolicited PM or even post publicly something like "give me a call, happy to chat."

I also agree that RE appreciation is unlikely to match the last dozen years, but you never know.Where I am unsure we agree is that paying $450k to improve the cash flow ~$3k (your numbers but I expect my delta wold be similar meaning both my cash flow estimates would be worse than yours but both would be worse by the same amount not affecting the difference) makes sense especially if the cost of having the extra $450k is only 6% rate which is historically simple to beat via numerous investment options and hopefully no one is investing in RE for an expected of 6%.  

A huge number of properties we have looked at would have issues on this front.It can lead to an opportunity to improve the value of a property if you can buy it with an illegal area, get that area legalised and then sell on with a higher value that the bank would lend against, but it's not clear cut and it seems though that there are almost two levels of 'legalisation' - we were able to register all of the annex on the plans and could fully incorporate a portion of it but there is another portion that is too close to the back boundary wall that should only be used for things like storage and not ever for habitation. 2) During the purchase process be careful, amongst other issues with this property we had the situation where the seller's lawyer was not actually a lawyer (having been struck off).

Your wanting to do high-risk via extreme leverage....via high risk OOS investing, committed to never being boots-on....... via high risk class c....... doing reno's to make habitable which is high risk at a level we should just call it EPIC risk..... 

Focus on building a network of contractors for repairs, set clear boundaries for house hacking, and take advantage of tax benefits.

The POWER of Real Estate Investing is: - Securing an asset via only having to give a capital investment of a fraction of it's price. - Having other persons pay for that other purchase capitol that you did not spend. - Getting to keep all the rewards of appreciation over time be it in rents and/or market value. 

However, everything I have found in my preliminary search is via the auctions and it sounds like that's not the way to go.

@Eric Jones,I put your exercise back in YOUR lap.

I suspect the guests via their reviews will dictate what constitutes a bedroom.  

You either have to earn extra money via sweat equity (working as your own PM or do the renovation work), or you have to be ok with a negative cash flow.