On one hand, I completely agree with @Peter Mckernan when he says you need a mentor and someone to help you through the trials and tribulations of learning the business you're not taught in pre-license courses.

Thank you Lydia.I just signed up for Propstream trial and will see how it works for Baton Rouge.

A "small" investment might help you jump "years" of trial and error.

Also this settlement is not certainly going to come up at trial of other cases.

Most of the times, the best ones have zero availability and you won't get them referred to you by other investors because they do not want to risk losing them for their own projects.Somewhat trial and error, but I have found that working with (even newer) contractors you can typically feel out what the relationship will be like early on.

I cannot find any information on how advanced the BP calculator is, and I must have burned my free trials a few years ago or I would take it for a spin!

I know that there's going to be a lot of variation from property to property and community to community, but I am just tryng to get a general sense of best practice.

In 2003, it was 5.9% See the variations in the chart?

Similar to how one needs to know their local market intimately to know what a good cap rate is for a specific location, you’ll find a lot of variation on what constitutes a good rent to purchase price ratio.

By formally, I mean web research, calls with Sales, product demos, and free trial evaluations.