This time I decided to make my own spreadsheet instead of using someone else's.

Equities, stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, silver and everything else is going to increase in nominal value but not necessarily in real value. 

He just said "now I don't feel appreciated, let's settle those favors I did you before we proceed any further" and sent me an invoice for $2K for the lost materials + time with the break-ins.Overall, the job seems to be ~80% complete but with poor quality, and I will absolutely need to hire someone else to fix his mistakes.

I know one thoughts are “I can sell it for more” but that increases the risk as well because if I had a $250k loan on a $225k property and values continued to decline and the mortgage is in someone else’s name - I would be like “ok let me hand the deed back and walk away and go ahead and sue me…

If you have anymore advice or anything else to share please do so!

After she passed it became a rental to a slum land lord and after one of his tenants destroyed the property while having 8 people living inside it's 950 sq ft, he and I had a conversation and I bought it from him as-is for 69,000 and he didn't have deal with the mess they left.

Here is a followup of some of what I was able to find in case someone else has a similar interest...https://www.getgrooven.com/multifamily-properties/

While I might consider an area to be "C" class, someone else might consider it to be "B" class.A lot of the minute details is going to depend on you and your perception. 

@Sara Donohue I would re-iterate what someone else said and make sure you have cash reserves for any real estate you're doing because problems happen and sometimes you have to come out of pocket to fix them. 

In the south suburbs, there are tons of great single-family cosmetic flipsWe do have winter, high taxes, and crime, but like anything else there is pros & cons to everything.