I hear you on the property taxes and insurance—those can definitely eat into margins in Texas.

I'm wondering if there's enough margin to wholesale it. 

I'm with you that sidewalk slip and fall litigation may be less likely in the Midwest than say Mid Atlantic which tends to have more litigious cities but dismissing premises liability issues can come back to bite an investor and when these properties have such razor thin margins that an investor must consider the cost benefit analysis of safety against ROI, there is a real estate issue and is usually a losing proposition.   

With the hold periods on BRRRRs nowadays, your margins will get crushed with hard money interest payments/points/fees. 

You'll find fix n flips will have increased margins in the Cincinnati area.

in a stick frame market and one of the cheapest markets to build we build with margin at $190 or so a square foot. that will go up over time about 5% or 10% a year to keep up with new build price increases. we are buidling a 3 story walk up and source some of the lowest priced crews.

Yes, PMC's operate on slim margins with minimal staff - why do you think that is?

The industry is mature and margins have properly compressed.

If you are new, be sure you can raise the funds before proceeding.In my opinion, you are going to have a hard time raising money with a 6% pref and 70% of the profits after that unless you have a lot of newbie investors in your Rolodex. 

We all don't care how much Apple profits on our iPhone... what really matters is the product or value we get or in this terms the ROI on our principal.The fees can be broken down in the three main fees (so you might have to combine some of the above fees under one of the categories below):Acquisition fee (paid % of the asset price) - normally 1-3%Asset management (paid % of the income the asset produces) - normally 1-3%Distribution or exit fee (paid % of the sold asset price) - normally 1-3%Development fees (this is present in development deals) - exampleNOTE: Just because these fees are high or the split structure has too much going to the GP does not disqualify it.