A more modest proposal would be for me to find the real culprit:In all seriousness the underwriting in the crowdfunding industry is pretty poor from what I have seen recently.  

The only time I could see the agent so far underestimating the ARV would maybe be in the case of a proposed addition.

Deliver a formal investment proposal regarding your real estate opportunity to interested parties.

[Snip]  Unless required by law or legislative process, nothing contained in this Letter Agreement or resulting from any financial or other advice provided by LFC may be disclosed to any competitor of LFC, or to any client or potential client of LFC, or to any other party (with the exception of representatives from HUD and authorized third party contractors) in any manner without LFC's prior written approval.

Your proposal with your builder is transparent but awfully collusive.  

I'd like to re-approach him on the issue, but i'd like to have a proposal in hand and workout a solution w/ him.... problem is i'm lost w/ ideas on how to make this work for both of us.  

If you are putting up some money and splitting some of the work, you can then propose various combinations.  

Believe it or not, TREC is actually in place to protect consumers, and we have plenty of legislation to protect them.Back to your earlier point that real estate brokerage isn't competitive, that's not my experience.  

In a residential lease, would not the type of tenancy typically be defined by legislation?   

All proposals welcome.