Rents also increase over time.The dollar per door is not the efficient metric to measure for imo 1. as I said above, it's not an accurate representation of profitability. and 2. gauging a good return is only possible when you consider opportunity costs, scalability, and repeatability.

You will get a lot of pressure to rent to people who can't pay rent, and who will end up paying for the losses?  

(I realize this may be too low should I budget closer to $150K - how do I gauge this?)

Real estate clubs are a good place to start because you can get an initial impression of each other face-to-face without the pressures of doing a deal.Do look for money as aggressively as you look for properties.Do meet and get to know your lenders, as well as their lending criteria.

First of all, I didn't start this thread to attack the professional tradesmen, but sometimes it gets to a point where even if you want to pay someone for a job, you end up DIYing the last 10% (or 25 or 50) of the work whether it be additional damages, debris cleanup or poor workmanship.May be this is unique in South Florida, I am not sure.I have a long list of pet peeves, but I will just mention a few here that I noticed that seems to happen almost all the time.For example, whenever I hire someone to do work outside, say painting, stucco plastering, landscape, pest control, anything that involves borrowing your garden hose to dilute, mix, rinse...they ALWAYS find a way to deform the hose ends - by stepping on the connection, cross threading the connection, dropping the nozzle, clogging the nozzle, and they NEVER turn the hose bib off, they just release the nozzle handle and leave the hose pressurized. 

Realizing that the first property doesn't have to be perfect but is meant for the momentum of your real estate investor career takes a lot of pressure of the first purchase. 

BUT I feel a tremendous pressure to keep the projects coming in so that he would be worth the guaranteed salary that it would take to get him on board at the company.I love incentivizing based on performance, but he is all about a guaranteed salary.

The barrier to entry is high in Alaska relative to the returns (unless you're able to buy at steep discounts) and the market fundamentals are not very good.My prediction for the market is continued pressure for owners for the foreseeable future.

It take a lot of the pressure off to put it that way haha

Wanted to gauge the cost savings on this first.