I pitched her even getting a real estate agent license to contribute to the venture as she used to sell new construction when she first started out in sales.Ultimately, you are asking them to put a huge amount of trust in you and go along with making a large financial commitment with you.

I generated the list by combining Zillow's smooth, seasonally adjusted home value dataset (ZHVI) with their rent index (ZORI) for metro areas.

Like others have mentioned, there’s appreciation, depreciation, leverage, and tax benefits that produce a compelling risk adjusted return. 

By paying off the land loan through the new construction, it removes that lien and allows the construction loan to move into 1st position.   

These larger construction companies are able to do up to 25 projects at a time and even have in-house project managers.

Perfect - do your best to make the floors as even as new construction.

Hey @Chi Lo - I actually have a video on my YouTube page about this (lookup ClosedByMo on YouTube).Regarding walls being damp and waterproofed, it means there needs to be waterproofing on the basement retainer walls (this is something you can do post-construction and the contractors would need to dig around the house exposing the basement/foundation to apply the waterproofing). 

He may know some GCs so I'll reach out- but meantime if you need an inspector you can trust for before, during or after construction, he's a Godsend. 

My client plan is to demolish and do new construction within 1 year.

Consider this: there are an estimated 10K homes in Pacific Palisades, at least half of which were destroyed. 25% were constructed during the 60-70's and +/- 75 TOTAL were built in the past FIVE years.