My father and 2 of his partners are going to develop the building (this has been the established pattern in previous offices that the partners are the investors and they hire a 3rd party to develop the site and building).

Especially if you develop a pattern of purchasing personally first, then capitalizing a LLC with the property. 

It usually will give you a pattern to follow where everyone is moving and what the market is doing.

I wondered if a fix-and-flip is a better option in my case, where I can use proceeds from the sale as seed money to pay off the HELOC, rinse, and repeat; but I can see how that would get into an endless pattern.

@Michael Choy - if I wasn't able to invest locally, I would definitely be looking at Birmingham regardless of the what the population pattern is;  the city is still doing quite well overall, and I think it cash flows easier than Huntsville as well;  however, I do like the appreciation play that comes with Huntsville/Madison. 

@Teri Waldrop there is a great post by @James Park about North Atlanta trends where he talks about the market update, Mercedes, migration patterns, schools. http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/99/topics/1086...On a side note: In case you missed it there is an Atlanta Meetup scheduled this February.

We are half way through the quarter and that number is consistent with their buying pattern in the past year. 2014Q4 was 122, 2014Q3 was 84. 2014Q2 was 61. 2014Q1 was 83.

Usually a pattern will show up: responsible, or Not.Another point to keep in mind- lawyers being what they are, and all, as a PM you have to be VERY careful about exactly how you respond to reference requests.

There are other indicators or patterns as well that I have seen.

I practiced analyzing properties with my sheet till I started seeing patterns in amounts it took to do certain amounts of work.