Your friend's credit score is going to make your interest rate skyrocket if you do a residential loan (if you can get it at all.

I’m actually from Puerto Rico , I was stationed in Cali and decided to stay  but then the housing prices started to sky rocket., so it made start looking else where for real estate investments.  

Then I hired a “big” PM firm- which was a pure disaster- the permanent turnover of the staff, skyrocketed repairs.

That, of course, was back in the wild wild west of lending when home prices were skyrocketing and loans were easy to come by.

They purchased their home for $35k - the value has sky rocketed in the past 15 years.

Do what you want to do, be passionate about whatever you decide and chances of it working will skyrocket.

But with construction costs skyrocketing and considering how every good contractor is booked for 6 months, you'll end up getting quotes closer to $250-300/sqft.Generally it is not a good practice to estimate the ENTIRE project based on price/sqft, as some items are way more expensive than others, but you asked for a "general" ballpark.

Prices are sky rocketing with interest rates for Seattle/Bellevue/Bothell etc ,is it still good time to buy or wait?

banks got out of rehab lending years ago.. unless you have a small commercial bank and a banker that will do something special for you.. which you could have going to a big bank is waste of time they don't have that product and have not had it in years unless you have multi millions on deposit with them and are in their private banking group.. this is why HML has sky rocketed.. they have filled a niche the banks left.

I know that real estate is sky rocketing over here so I'm assuming competition for  properties is fierce.