Without it, unless they have deep pockets, they cannot pre-fund deals and or market to drive traffic.

It'll depend on the zoning district and whether or not its historic, but I believe the norm for a new project without a variance is a 10' setback in the front and 30' in the rear, which equates to 60% lot coverage on a 100' deep lot.

@Taron Jackson yes Brooklyn is over saturated and you need some very DEEP pockets & ALL CASH to compete or a large amount of investors with deep pockets.

Am I digging too deep?

As a friend likes to say, I was thrown into the deep end of the pool and I'm trying to learn to swim.

I'm not trying to throw a wet blanket on your plan, but I am just saying that discounts beyond 30% are a rarity....largely because it's so simple to figure out the value of these homes, and if the home is in decent shape, the heirs wouldn't have much motivation to sell at a deep discount over retail.I would recommend that you avoid taking out a loan--private or otherwise--I would just flip the contract.  

We don't just change sheets and scrub floors, we deep clean the kitchen and bath, wash windows, vacuum every square inch of floor, use lint rollers on our sheets, water plants, organize books, dust the blinds, wipe down all hard surfaces and couches, and more depending on how messy the guests were.

I'm hungry to get nose deep into flipping and buy and hold but I want to be efficient about it.

Then you hear about what you can and cannot do, and attach a cost to your fixer-upper and  realize why no one has dove in that deep pit.

Greasing up the trigger and about to jump into the deep end of the pool.