If it doesn't sell they haven't lost anything.Your target market is then retail buyers who want to start out with some cushion from the get go.

This tends to give you a nice cushion for profit as well as setting money aside to use for any issues that arise with the property.

My goal in this is to cushion the blow and be available to discuss concerns, explain the underlying reasons etc.Why 1-1 instead of text/email?

Nothing wrong with a cushion of cash.  

If you now have no cash cushion and are not comfortable, then get a HELOC and keep a 0 balance.

The reason I'm asking is when I was younger, with little to lose and little in the way of cushion, I struggled to get to the point where I could survive the "5-year flood" (a couple of years of slower times, which is the normal business cycle in a healthy economy).

Therefore, having extra cushion of liquid cash to plan for some unexpected is a wise move.

Build that cushion in on the front end.TEAM:Are you going at this alone or will you be hiring help?

Investors will need to be prepared to carry their “flips” through a short term tenant if this really goes south.If you are selling to an end user, there may be a little more time cushion to sell because if they are buying at a price where they can easily afford the price and like where they are living, then it doesn’t matter if it takes years for the market to recover.

In our deals, we structure it so that the LP gets a 6-8% pref that is structured as debt so they get paid FIRST and the GP gets paid second if there's money left for the split.Also, we only do deals with project IRR of 30-40% so there's enough margin of safety or cushion for the investors because bad things sometimes happen in any investment.