.- If the tenants pay for heat, it still can be an issue if other propertiesin the area have natural gas.

You are definitely in the right place :) Jump in, start asking questions, send colleague requests, start threads, and perhaps most importantly - read through The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing a few times until it's 2nd nature!

The loan, based on interest and LTV, is HML/PML in nature.

I guess it's not easy to find someone with rehab experience in both areas since most people naturally focus on one area.I was asking because Houston seems to have more distressed properties which may affect the sales prices - leading to lower margins.

For instance on one job we had to install a steel stairway that our son had designed, and had fabricated.

In fact, I am so anti-BS Guru, the selling the "easy money" dream crap drove me so crazy that was one of the major reasons I started FIBI over 6 years ago with Jeremy Roll.Because of the nature & the reemergence of real estate investing in the public eye, there is always a percentage of newbies & wannabe investors with most meetings, not just FIBI.

Given the capital intensive nature of the business, why not parlay that into some excellent vacations and long-weekends?

You may want to consider natural light coming in the great room as well, since you're not going to have much light coming in from the front you may want to add more windows in the great room to bring in more light.

Many planned projects of this nature do not become a reality.You can get information on the likelihood of project coming to fruition by looking into zoning decisions that have been made by the local municipality.

There are a lot of really nice natural colors to choose from.