In your post, you floated 3 business ideas that are vastly different, and which people spend years preparing for and pursuing.

Rent: Would love to hold a hopefully appreciating asset in a great neighborhood, but may be hard to keep rented out as its not in a rental neighborhood and above the average price point Background that may be pertinent: This house is on a floating rate, 20 year note owe 200k.

@Dallas KiddI installed floating vinyl tile over padding, not realizing the flooring should not go over padding. sadly, did not realize until after I put it in 4 houses. as of now, only 1 house needs replaced, but I am sure others to follow.

Fixing structural will likely cost me between $200,00 to $300,000, consensus is it needs a floating foundation (I'm in a slide area with earthquake risk).

Once she is  a resident next year she’ll add 60 k and in 4 years another 200-300 a year.Paying out of pocket costs won’t be devastating as I could float those two mortgages and my next one (perm residence) on about 45 percent of my take home pay .Any opinion is appreciated.Eddie

Things seem to be drifting back to business as usual from my perspective.

Even if you can't actually make a visit, just floating the possibility of making the trip can tell you a lot about how the company views service.

I avoid this by not working with contractors that require draws :)  For projects as small as a house rehab, unless you're talking 6 figures, a contractor that can't float his materials and crews during the project is either brand new, has shoddy credit, or has to rob Peter to pay Paul.

Recently we have been floating the idea of purchasing a multi family home as a sole investment and using the VA loan on a foreclosure as our primary residence, as we would like to plant some semi-permanent roots in the area for my wife's occupation.

They would float a price, the listing would be put on MLS with a dollar amount and then changed to Auction, and if you wanted to pay that price it wouldn't go live on the auction.