If you’re only thinking about making an extra $10,000 per year, or even doubling your salary, it’s possible you’re thinking too small.

Possibly lower returns than projected because of statutorily mandated interest rates following court judgements.

There is no possible way, you can rationally estimate (guess), which one out of how ever many others may say it takes, you hit on. 

BiggerPockets also has a calculator to analyze deals, and I highly recommend you start this as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to buy.

Just saw the news , over 1000 structures destroyed and possibly 28,000 in danger . 

It could be possible to still negotiate a purchase depending on the stage of foreclosure it is in. 

Also, you can possibly take equity out of your current properties instead of taking out a construction/hard money loans.Purchase and Rehab Financing:If you are doing simple purchase and rehab (not ground up), then it's not that hard to qualify and you just need to right broker/program.

If you can hire really good contractors to assist and a good manager/realtor-may be a possibility.

At the beginning, it may be difficult to get a more expensive property that will appreciate well and so your choice is go with the cheaper property and get cash flow until you can sell and upgrade, or wait for a really good deal which you may be waiting for quite a while and its possible that you will have spent so much time waiting that you could have purchased multiple cash flowing properties by the time you get a good appreciation deal that you can qualify for / refinance after the rehab. i know anyone can go out and get seller financing deals, HML, flip to build capital or whatever the case may be I am just saying sometimes those will be harder and could result in less deals overall. 

Quote from @Devin James: In one of our development projects, the City staff asked us to remove 40 units from our concept plan.This wasn’t requested by the City Commission at a formal hearing, it was the opinion of the staff.Our original concept already proposed fewer units than the current zoning would have allowed.Here’s what erasing 40 units means:- 40 fewer homes for buyers- Over $1M in lost profit for our team- Fewer tax dollars and impact fees that could’ve benefited the City’s infrastructure & servicesWe gotta get betterEveryone wants more affordable housing, but not everyone wants to do what it takes to achieve it we never listen to the recommending bodies. we move for city approvals and work closely. the other thing we do is keep going back to the same groups over and over and over and over every month on the same agenda and make very small reductions like 2% or 4% and that reduces and beats them down eventually they accept what you want. it's just before beating a dead horse. we keep tabling until they give us something we all agree on then we go to vote. in our city in columbus we have to get recommendations but that's our strategy. we used to come out as aggressive as possible. we typically study developments in the area and keep it very similar in terms of density. we have a track record of very controversial projects and litigation and not taking no as an answer. after a year of that haha I can tell you it's not worth it. now we are more relationship based and buying the right kinds of plots of land. if the numbers don't work on the front end don't do the development.