Haha Allright folks, I shall go back to the drawing board and make some truly clever for an intro!

The contractor might need some advance money for permit fees, drawings, survey, etc.

I agree with you Joel, while 21 units typically draw in certain kinds of tenants, I believe it still can be rewarding if we are careful.

My parents have equity in a property of which drawing $200k on the HELOC in no way risks their livelihood.

Yes I can draw a better tenant with an expensive house but it's not going to give me the same return.

A HUGE part of the costs are the lot preparation costs, permit fees, and the school tax really actual construction costs are more like 60-70/sfBUT this is greatly due to taking all of the general contractors markup out, paying him only daily to be on site for framing and roofing and paying him instead of an expensive architect to draw all the plans in autocad(other generals pay him to do this for them) He is getting older, it is a nice setup for him, saves us money, makes me more money as project manager (I get paid out of labor allowance for days I am supervising jobsite) and saves our owner/builder a grip of money allowing him to get a decent return from the investment. which for our area is amazing because you can't really build for profit right now unless you are a builder.

If you are getting into development, since you have taken engineering, are you able to draw plans, do renderings, etc.?

If you know a good geographer, you might be able to get ahead of the curve.Interesting comment regarding the keynote speaker Paul...I actually believe that the stock market should stall for the next 20 years given baby boomers reluctance to leave money in there as they start drawing from their nest egg....only time will tell!

They will not do long term commercial loans because as interest rates rise they will have to start paying higher and higher interest rates for CD's, Savings, checking accounts to draw deposits from customers and money into the branch.

In the past 3 years, the pace of improvement in the area has accelerated dramatically.Pre-DemoPicturesNow the fun part:Next Post: Detailed Budgeting, Building out the Brand, and Architectural Drawings and approvals, and demolition.