A couple of things to note:1.

From updated tenant rights laws to shifting zoning regulations, staying compliant can feel like a moving target.

Hard to say.

@Anthony MillerYour property management experience is a major advantage as you start investing, giving you a head start with tenant screening, lease agreements, and maintenance coordination.

With countless loan options, complex terms, and strict lending criteria, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Quote from @Devin James: In one of our development projects, the City staff asked us to remove 40 units from our concept plan.This wasn’t requested by the City Commission at a formal hearing, it was the opinion of the staff.Our original concept already proposed fewer units than the current zoning would have allowed.Here’s what erasing 40 units means:- 40 fewer homes for buyers- Over $1M in lost profit for our team- Fewer tax dollars and impact fees that could’ve benefited the City’s infrastructure & servicesWe gotta get betterEveryone wants more affordable housing, but not everyone wants to do what it takes to achieve it we never listen to the recommending bodies. we move for city approvals and work closely. the other thing we do is keep going back to the same groups over and over and over and over every month on the same agenda and make very small reductions like 2% or 4% and that reduces and beats them down eventually they accept what you want. it's just before beating a dead horse. we keep tabling until they give us something we all agree on then we go to vote. in our city in columbus we have to get recommendations but that's our strategy. we used to come out as aggressive as possible. we typically study developments in the area and keep it very similar in terms of density. we have a track record of very controversial projects and litigation and not taking no as an answer. after a year of that haha I can tell you it's not worth it. now we are more relationship based and buying the right kinds of plots of land. if the numbers don't work on the front end don't do the development. 

Start by formalizing the transition—create a lease agreement and maintain detailed records of rental income and expenses.

It's comforting to know I don't have to obsess about reviews. 

If you are attempting to use income for the non-conforming unit, they will need to verify that it can legally be used as a rental unit.

If we bite off people’s heads when they admit disaster, it suppresses legitimate issues with these techniques.Just for context there is a lot of history with the OP and some of us on here going back years (like the thread I linked to above from about a year ago and several others if you use the search function with his name) with him minimizing the risks of how he was structuring these transactions and some of us being cautionary, warning him that exactly what happened here could happen, which made him defensive and dismissive.