(I'm sure both the average consumer AND the average entrepreneur would disagree, of course, but hey - y'all're the guys with the fancy, big money jobs and the college degrees - what do I know ...)

All this fancy mumbo fha guideline gumbo means is that your projected market rents assuming all units, if it were rented Times 75% need to be greater than what your monthly payment is  (PITIA = principal/interest/taxes/insurance/assessments monthly), other wise FHA will not lend at that loan amount so common solutions to this when rents are too low in your local market are to put more money down payment which defeats the whole purpose of low 3.5% down FHA doesnt it?

They come in with fancy spread sheets, break downs, proformas or cool looking power points with pictures and graphs.

If you stick to American name brand units that are basic - no fancy sensors, doodads or anything else - W/Ds are surprisingly durable, even with renters.

Kinda reminds me of the dorms I lived in in college ... probably for the same reasons.

Unless you buy into the fancy overpriced properties (a minority), properties like-for-like are much cheaper than in North America and the building quality is either the same or even superior;2.

When this happens the fancy/complicated entity structure is useless protection-wise.Lots of attorneys out there who will sell you a $10k+ entity structure that doesn't mesh with your operations as you scale your portfolio and team.

i do think it's challenging, though, for a brand new investor with zero experience to jump right into a huge rehab with a contractor they've never worked with before.the contractor might want a larger up-front payment to mitigate their own risk, and they're not going to be interested in any kind of fancy nonsense like a 'penalty' when they know a new investor has never managed a large project before.i have also found that some contractors, including reputable ones, don't even want to share itemized bids because they just don't want to have to argue about the individual line items. 

They aren’t fancy but they preform well and I’ll do two cost segs this year.

Regarding verifying living in the dorms, I've never done that, but I also have nicer houses that cost a smidge more and require cosigners, so that weeds out the party animals for the most part.