Hey @Jon Pflueger - your best bet will be to retain an architect, they typically have a good understanding of what's feasible and not in a specific zoning/area + will know how to handle variance permissions and etc. 

Quote from @David Cherkowsky: Material Participation: Material participation is the key factor here.

By retaining ownership, you can continue to benefit from future property value increases.3.

Just wondering if there are good internet guides out there to help new investors understand steps in renovations and lay out scopes of work and materials needed so we don't miss anything?  

@Sandee SampsonA construction attorney would be who to contact but you are going to spend a lot more than $7000 in getting this resolved against a builder.Also let’s say you win, the courts could also say you didn’t pay for a retaining wall which is needed so it’s a betterment to the property so you would still need to pay for the wall and they would be responsible for some soil etc.

Plus you’re optimizing for materials cost by reusing and buying some used stuff. 

Its all about quality leads, not the tool.This analogy is similar here;   a really good contractor can give a better rsult with crapy materials vs a crapy contractor with top materials

I will be adding these to my list of things to learn/retain.

Of course, you won't listen to this common sense because you know more than everyone else here on BP and will have to learn the hard way.So, recommend you find and attend some local investor meetings or commit to watching all the videos and reading all the material here on BP that you can.Good luck:)

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?