There is so much information on here and a wealth of helpful and generous individuals.

I can't believe no one has mentioned money yet.Being an agent and buying my own property the 3% commission on the buy side is like a bonus and saving 3% when I sell is great too.

The leasing manager likely gets a bonus too on the new tenant, they just made work for themselves at your expense. 

Right now we're still in the thinking phase, but since the initial tenants would be my son and some friends, and I don't know how much utilities etc will run, I'm thinking of setting the rent as all-inclusive, with a *generous* amount included for utilities. 

The builder was also offering an agent bonus, which I gave to the buyer.2.

If you want to get really creative you could take the hard money loan of 70000, then refinance with the bank at 75% arv into a home equity line of credit (HELOC) which would be $93,750 if appraised at $125,000, which would give you enough to pay back the hard money lender and have some bonus bucks left over, now that your house is remodeled it will qualify for conventional financing so you can refi the HELOC into a 30 yr fixed rate loan.

Just document it well.I wouldn't invest unless there is a good ROI, but they are bonus reasons to invest outside of your home market on top of the ROI.If you have any other questions let me know.

I should mention that the building will be very close to where I live (a nice bonus), is in a lower income (mid $30k per household) area.

Whichever method you use, if you are new and looking to grow, and/or this is your first time working with this investor, I would lean on the generous side with them with their returns ... for you in that situation, the long term relationship and personal learning experience should be more important than your short term return.

I have a house in the East Chicago In market that's mins away from casinos good neighbor hood2brm 2.5 bath 1465 sqare ft Asking 54K Arv 87K rent average $1001Recently updated has bonus features I have it on Zillow and Owners.com it's been on there for 10days I'm not getting buyers calls like I should I pay to list on MLS ?