I would highly recommend you spending some time on the ground to form a solid understanding of the area(s) you're interested in, building a team, etc.Read up as much as you can here at BP and elsewhere, understanding the neighborhoods, the schools, what sells and what doesn't, what rents and what doesn't...you can do a lot of that online.  

Even through a refinance in the middle so you don't slow your model down much.Or a very interesting exercise would be to pro forma your taxes at ordinary income with the 20% pass through deduction vs cap gains vs costs of holding and 1031ing.

A slight tweak, like showing a refinance in year 2 as part of your pro forma instead of year 3-4, can magically boost a 13% IRR deal to 16-17%.

@Rob Meyer Rob, before you start spending time and money on 3rd party consultants you need to run a high level pro forma analysis that starts with establishing the finished value of your planned project.That value less commissions and closing costs and a developer profit forms the total cost that the value supports.Developer profit should reflect an Equity Multiple of 1.

There are a million people that can do a pro-forma or do some underwriting on a deal. 

Either way, that cost and risk should be baked into your pro forma numbers.

What are the current and pro-forma rents?

Well I didn’t bite on his sale antics because I just have a hard time with the 6.5% cap rate on a pro-forma.

It turns out, he wants to form a JV for me to help him wholesale them. 

So even if you pick a state with stronger protections like WY or NV, the cause of action arose in the state where the tenant fell, so likely that the court where the accident happened would have jurisdiction.California tends to have more laws on the books and requirements and restrictions that it can be a good idea to form a CA LLC for out of state property so that you as a CA resident are covered, and to try to have your contracts fall under the purview of CA courts.