At the Cheapest, price for a buildable lot I see now we'd have 100k of room for profit.30k down5k closing costsApprox 15k to demolish the house.Roughly 1000 per month mortgage and taxSpend 50k to buy and knock it down.Then 1k of mortage payments per month.1 year 62 spent2 year 74 spent3 year 86 spent4 year 98 spent5 year 110 spentEven if we only sold after 5 years at that low price which should go up if there aren't any other catastrophes...

Just as a Detroit bear could be blind to potentially significant opportunities, a Detroit bull could venture into potentially catastrophically risky speculation.In navigating these factors, it's good for all of us to share and debate.

The pros of having an LLC is that in the event of a catastrophic event in your LLC, it will not roll to other properties.

I have experienced two catastrophic (clean water) floods in the past year.

However, your odds of a catastrophic event increase exponentially when all of your screwball tenants are in one place.

Once you get to a large enough portfolio that can absorb a major catastrophe in $200k to $400k range, you can start adding private water/sewer parks to your portfolio.  

As far as the furnaces go, I’ve nursed old furnaces along for many years beyond their normal lifespan and there won’t be any catastrophic damage if one goes (since you have four in the building the unit with the failed furnace will stay warm enough thet it won’t be an emergency, probably no issue with pipes freezing or it being uninhabitable, and seeing as you’re in San Fran it probably doesn’t get that cold anyway).

if you never had flooding issues before and it was a catastrophic event that caused an issue I think calling a waterproofing company may be a waste of $$, at least as the first step. 

Assuming a catastrophic loss that burns through all the insurance resulting in a large outstanding liability, the assets of the entity will be liquidated to satisfy a judgment.  

Do they consistently not pay their bills and get sent to collections, or did they have some catastrophic life event happen several years ago and now they are working the dave ramsey method and closing their accounts as they get paid off.