People with realistic, measurable plans are so much more likely to succeed and that is awesome that you have them.Setup some Keyword Alerts for terms such as "Auburn" and "Washington".

He said he wanted to take a little more time to be able to pull together cost-saving measures such as, say, buying double the amount of flooring for a discount and using it on two houses he is doing, or maybe waiting for a great appliance sale, etc.

This was going to be my home for 2 years to then sell at a profit (hopefully) so I didn't want a stop-gap measure that would detract from the sales price in 2 years so I passed.If I were looking at a house that needed major work (flip) I can guesstimate repair costs pretty well so I'd come up with my offer price taking into account my guesstimate for repairs and get it under contract.

Professor Shiller has cut through the inflation and measures and compared prices in real dollar terms.

I will use Jeff S. suggestion about using measuring PI payment as a % of rent but instead of 50% I am going to keep it at <35% since I want to maximize cash flow.

@J Scott has a great book on Flipping/Rehabs"What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow ...And 36 Other Key Financial Measures" by Frank Gallinelli *This book goes through the math well and explains the "why".

Cash-on-cash return measures the return on your personal cash contribution, not the total amount invested (as you'll have debt service costs).For example, iuf you put in $10K of your own capital and raised $150K worth of other capital, and wanted to generate $2000/month, you'd need a cash-on-cash return of 240%, which is practically impossible.So, you're going to actually need $160K of your own capital if you want to generate $2000/month at 15% cash-on-cash.There are lots of different ways you can grow to $160K in 7 years.

It's $250 per day, he said I'd probably have a blast with it (he's probably right) and he'd come out and mark up where I need to dig and give me a quick lesson in how to measure the depth of the hole and other stuff I'd need to know.  

Cash-on-cash return would measure the annual return you made on the property in relation to the down payment.

I'll have to measure the wall height.