Regarding the question of appreciation: I really believe appreciation has to be heavily discounted.

I've been wondering about the 203k myself and the feedback that I've been receiving is that it's a lot of extra work (paperwork and actual coordination of extra inspections, apprasials, ect).I wanted to look into HUD homes, but I wasn't sure what the best resource for them is...on the HUD website there aren't any homes listed in my area, which I find hard to believe since I'm in heavily populated Northern NJ!

It challenges us to take time away from the cash-on-cash return analysis in order to make a higher level, introspective analysis of the true motivating factors for our actions and behavior.I believe that people's motivations are evolving, and most heavily influenced by their individual experiences and their current stage of life.In my circumstances, I invest to secure a comfortable standard of living in my old age, and to get to the point where I can focus on helping other people.Being a student and fan of baseball history, I want to quote the epitaph of one of my heroes, Jackie Robinson."

Currently I am involved in all aspects but I am still heavily involved in the nitty gritty of all the projects.

Up until this point I have been heavily involved  with all aspects of the business, from finding the houses, working on the houses, hiring subs, and selling the houses.  

I think with the big lakes and lake front homes and all that goes on you will do very well there.I did one flip there a few years back that was marginal just because I had a marginal guy doing it.. try to find Stewart Fox on BP  his family is from there and they are very experienced in the business and heavily invested in the area for years.Best of luck and GREAT choice I fly through Houston and for the life of me I can't figure out how anyone could live there year round  LOL  but that me..

I believe you're correct that 'business' loans may not consider personal income very heavily in their qualification process.Unfortunately, however, I also believe most will strongly consider business income in their qualifying process.So, I don't think there's really a way around the income requirements for conventional financing.One thing I'd recommend is looking into multi family properties, For 2-4 unit properties, 75% of the rental income can be used towards qualifying.Feel free to reach out if you want to chat about this further

Lenders have strict "guidelines" that are so heavily enforced they might as well be termed "rules" about what is acceptable in terms of support or not.

But they didn’t get away with much and the house has been heavily reinforced with locks.

You'll be heavily relying on your PM company and a local handyman for smaller repairs.