Darryl, the Donalds are entertaining and insightful however, odds are you will never play in the arenas of which he speaks.You will be best served by reading practical down to earth nuts and bolts methods of doing the street level deals long before you building Luxury highrise buildings across the globe.I like Don but his books really won't help the small investor much, other than motivating you to think very BIG!

From there, I'd like to achieve financial independence by the time I'm 35 and hopefully be able to focus on spending time with my family and growing my real estate portfolio.On the side, I'm working towards the CFA designation, I run ultra-marathons (got my first 100-miler in a month 😬), and I'm an altar server at my church.

No one has 3 million dollars to buy a mansion?

So I got this luxury property in a very nice gated subdivision in the northern suburbs of Atlanta.

I have been told I am ultra conservative by numerous parties........ : )I look for great deals not good or marginal deals.

Admittedly the breakdown isn't ultra precise as I wanted to see if we were even in the ballpark before getting much more detailed. 

and that was the logic I was going for too, at this point it wouldnt make sense for me to try to compete with some of the larger luxury units, because even if I tried to offer all of the same unit benefits, I still cant compete with the community benefits (ie, gym, pool, huge roof decks, lounges, etc, ground floor retail). 

Here are the gory details of the first one we built...others have been in the same range, though we're doing a bunch more luxury stuff now, so the costs there are obviously higher:http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/522/topics/900...

Fannie and Freddie are great options if you have the luxury of time....and some patience to go with it!!

We've put the TrafficMaster Allure Ultra Vinyl Planks in a few of our units.