I always found taping and mudding tedious and there are people who are good at it and those who are not so make sure you hire someone with real experience. we got a 2 k quote on a small 3 br in NJ so I have to run those formulas to see if it was a good quote.

@Denise Evans, is there a formula or some guideline Alabama uses for accepting counter offers?  

Is there a formula to how much more that land is worth when it is shovel-ready?

What's the formula to determining how much money we are able to borrow?

We learned that a LOT of people are willing to get rid of their father's or mother's home for a song because they can't come up with the tax money to keep it.I would say we do much the same sort of thing these days but our focus is shifting to finding small multifamily where the landlord just doesn't want to go on with what he has.

@David Song work with an experience qualified intermediary to help facilitate the 1031 exchange of two properties into 1.

Many people are against the 50% rule (and the 70% rule) saying things like "you should use actual numbers instead of some made up formula".

I perform conservative underwriting but using the 50% formula it is a negative almost $2k.

That's the formula for success.

Don't get too caught up in the over analysis trap, it is too easy to do that, there is a formula for everything these days.