I know I put the work in already to get to this point, and though I've had the confidence or the manifestation knowing all along I could do it without a doubt, it still shocks me at times that I was able to do it by myself with zero guidance and just intuition and a cant fail attitude!

Going from a $232K purchase to a $575K sale is no small feat, especially with a full excavation of the foundation and reframing involved.I’ve got a buddy who tried something similar outside San Diego last year.. he had to reinforce the entire property with a new slab and rebuild the interior layout from scratch.. definitely not for the faint of heart, but his final sale price turned heads in that local market.

That is just not realistic in this current market.So in my opinion it's important to expose yourself to a large number of deals, so you can develop an intuitive sense of what's reasonable and what's not (and quickly discard the ones that aren't).And it's true that there is no way to 100% protect from fraud (and not just in passive real estate investments but even in public stocks etc.).

Dang that's a bad layout.

You don't have to have water & sewer lines in the ground to approach a homebuilder company but you will have to have lots and layout drawn to get any type of commitment.

And I found QBO to be awful and not intuitive at all...and I'm a CPA to boot.

Change some of the variables, it will give you an intuitive feel for where you need to focus next given the opportunities at hand.Finally, the ultimate combination is having a business AND invest in real estate.

Layout is important.Not sure what this question is, but yes, you can typically sell properties vacant or occupied, or partially occupied.  

I'm still playing with the layout and trade-offs.

House have good layout, good area, great schools, price point was fair for that area.