A common rule of thumb is to budget around 1-2% of the property's value annually for maintenance.Management Fees: If you plan to hire a property manager or use a property management service, factor in their fees as part of your operating costs.Contingency Fund: Always include a contingency fund in your budget to account for unexpected expenses or fluctuations in operating costs.Financial Modeling Tools: Consider using financial modeling tools or spreadsheets designed for real estate investment analysis.

Trying to find a way of leveraging my teams strengths and relationships now (construction, design, engineering, etc.) and build smaller (12-50) unit multi-family or town home developments. 

Please note the information provided below is a layman's definition designed to provide a basic understanding for the general audience.

Do you have a good relationship with your parents and are you comfortable collecting rent from them, addressing maintenance requests for them and things like that? 

We'll be getting in an phase 1 of the buildout and the developers of the community have a proven track record having designed another community but on a larger scale elsewhere in the metroplex.

If it were one of my tenants I would put in enough window units to keep the house comfortable.

We do value design a lot and make sure that we have a great-looking color combo, but we buy mostly stock laminate.

I was initially considering selling my triplex and buying a single family in the bay area for the sake of aggressive future  appreciation while also giving a comfortable living with family but being a single W2 earner the numbers are still not making any sense besides future appreciation is highly speculative.So I was thinking if it would it make sense to buy a 12 plex in places like Oakland for around 2.2 mil using the sales proceeds of the triplex perhaps do a 1031 exchange.

Unit was loaded with designer purses, $1k shoes, jewelry, expensive furnishings, etc. 

Custom features everywhere and design style.