Please keep in mind your initial appraisal is just for the construction loan part based on vacant land and build specs.  

He was very excited about a spec home on the property.  

Sell the home and 1031 the profits into the 2nd build.FIRST QUESTION: due spec builds qualify for 1031?

So are you planning on building spec homes in Mountain Brook, or just finding the lots and selling them?

I had the property on the market at $269K for many months and thought about building a spec home but a cash offer finally came in and we settled on 190K.

Due to the lack of really good flip opportunities I'm thinking pretty hard about spec new construction instead. 

He actually did allow me into his apartment to show me he had battery powered lights of a sort for illumination and the adjacent neighbor whom I have befriended has told me he is gone out of his appartment 7-8am sometimes 10-11a and is gone until 11 pm.

@Sage BalakrishnanThe room specs will be a little different depending on your local building codes, but I can tell you from personal experience that you should read up on the code for what makes a legit room before you do anything else.  

We're really interesting in buying a cheap property to demo and spec build on the lot. 

Hi,I have been looking for a property with specific details in a particular area of Las Vegas, to the point where I know the exact specs of the house I am looking for, and the neighborhood I want it to be in.When I am not looking for real estate I run a consulting business, and I am starting to see a lot of similarities in between.Ideal client persona, lead generation, cold emailing/calling, getting your pitch dialed in etc.With my business, I know where to find leads by searching on a few websites where I have a membership that collects information such as employee count, last round of funding etc.I would like to apply some of my business strategies to real estate, but I am not sure where I can find information about properties, filter by lot size, tenant eviction, amount of equity someone has in a house etc.