Quote from @Luis Maza: Hi all, returning to the game this year and would like to pick your brain a bit, we started working with a wholesaler that will send us properties here and there with the "wholesale" price, but every time we check the properties and add the numbers, the margins are, well, I am not sure, too low perhaps, maybe we are getting to picky, but this is my dilemma for example...Today we got a property, wholesale price 300K, rehab about 50-60K, ARV is about 440k, but with the cost of hard money, we have about 100k cash, hard money interest at 11%, keeping the property for 90 days while we finish the rehab, closing costs,  commissions, we ended with 30k profit before taxes, while it sounds appealing, adding up all expenses and cost we ended up expending 50K on rehab(labor/materials) and about 50-60K with cost of the loan, interest, commissions, etc, everyone makes money, happy with that, but it seems that we are working to produce a 100k for everyone else, while we make 20-30k if everything goes well...In my opinion, we are not really getting "wholesale" price, it seems that we either buying to expensive, rehabs are much more than we would like to spend and the cost of borrowing that money is too high...We came up with thoughts as: lets fund it ourselves with money from a close friend/partner that we will bring in, and that would save us 10-15k here and there, but still, is that the norm now?

I definitely recommend that you seek out a Certified Cost Segregation Professional so that you are confident in the quality of the work performed and the deliverables produced.

In the meantime, I've come to realise the PM is incredibly incompetent and unreliable, and have found a new one.

Everyone is looking for a market predictor tool for MTRs and so far no one has produced one.

As a developer and land consultant, to have that kind of information at the forefront is incredibly valuable.Hopefully that helps.

There are some really great podcasts that talk about different things, and there are actually quite a few vendors that produce content (podcasts, blogs, webinars, etc) that can educate you a ton.

That is to say that I've experienced the incredible power of an appreciating market and that makes it very tempting to want to keep my current house, rent it out and let it appreciate.

The 1% rule incredibly flawed, even as a short form underwriting technique.

Magnolia has an incredible restaurant in another part of Waco, they bought a historic hotel that they are currently renovating, they bought an actual castle in the heart of the city that they are currently renovating, they own one of the largest real estate brokerage firms in the city that continues to serve the real estate market, and they themselves own several Magnolia short term rental properties that tourists can rent nightly to have the full Magnolia experience.

The other thing to keep in mind with self-showing lockboxes is that it's incredibly easy for someone use it as rent scam.