Plus with no state income tax, cheap insurance, and very low property taxes, I’m probably starting $20k ahead of most people, and that’s a tax free $20k.).

But a heads up...the best financing on these types of properties is seller/owner financing.

Looking ahead to retirement for both of us, we would like to make a solid investment with few worries about weather events.

But if employing your family works for you and for them - great, go ahead.

That’ll create higher chances of your project finishing ahead of time and create better alignment with you and your general contractor.

@Samuel Gebretnsae You have two choices. 1) Walk away and leave your money on the table. 2) Go ahead with the deal and take a leap of faith that the repair was done correctly.

At your scale, you would likely need to go full steam ahead and get the required licenses.

Bonus depreciation is just a special part of the US tax code.It allows you to take accelerated depreciation on portions of your property depending on when an asset is put into service.At the time of this writing, you can write off a huge portion (60% in 2024) of many qualified components that have a useful lifespan of 15 years or less.That means a certain percentage of things like landscaping, sidewalks, latches, appliances, fences, certain flooring, etc is depreciable in year 1.The bonus depreciation rate percentage changes yearly depending on the administration and the tax code.For years 2015 through 2017 first-year depreciation for all the items on a 15-year schedule or less was set to 50%.It was scheduled to go down to 40% in 2018 and 30% in 2019 and then 0% in 2020.But then Trump got elected, and he enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.That moved the bonus depreciation percentage to 100% from 2017 to 2022.In 2023 it went down to 80% and it’s currently at 60%.Depending on who gets elected again, 100% may be back on the table.Only time will tell.We know that the US government wants to incentivize more development and ownership of RE.They want Americans to continue to build and maintain our physical world.That’s why real estate is one of the most tax-advantaged assets in the US.Depreciation and bonus depreciation for RE are very positive and will likely continue in the years ahead.

I am currently waiting on a rather large legal settlement to hopefully hurry up and get him his $16,000 or if we can find someone to go ahead and pay him off early (no prepayment penalty), which would be hopefully paid off sooner than later as well in exchange for a secured lien on the property plus repayment of the $16,000 plus interest short term.

In my experience, these are the guys that want draws all the time (and it is easy to get ahead on them based on percentage).I tend to avoid the guys that can "start right now".