The main market factors are supply/demand, property tax rates, insurance rates, property values, and other local economic factors.Some others are, what is your risk tolerance?

In the syndicates I have set up (2) the ownership is divided according to capital supplied and I wouldn't put someone at this disadvantage.

If you need a good point of contact for contractors and material supplies I'm sure he would not mind helping out.

We found placing machines in each unit puts the utilities in the hands of the tenants and makes it easy to identify any abuse to the machinery ... it also allows us to use better, lower priced, equipment.Now, in the larger buildings, its a different story - we have machines supplied by a local company on a revenue share arrangement.

If you are doing a lot of DIY you will get better pricing on some of your supplies which is an added incentive.

To go totally high end, you'd supply a gas cook top with combo gas/elec. convection oven.

but rising inventory would create more supply of houses for buyers to choose from and for guys like me(flippers) that would force us to either make our houses the best on the block or lower our prices (probably both).

The housing supply/inventory has been between 30 days to 2.5 months for the past 18 months or so.

Demand is high and supply is maxed out (they can't build any more houses in the area because there is no more land to build on).

You might want to shop around on craigslist - my last one was closer to 3K, but could have been smaller size.Are you positive the water leak was from the toilet and not a frozen/leaky supply line?