You'll find a lot of hard working contractors.Have something to write on as many of the contractors won't have business cards.You'll still want to screen them a bit because, "there's a reason they work with the hands, not their heads":)

Also, if this is something that you are looking for in a hard money lender, you might want to look into more of a private money lending model verse anything else. 

Clearwater Beach (#6 US).Hard to believe 4 months ago they were under 6ft of water and getting 100+ MPH winds. 

Start ups are hard, expensive, and take a long time to get going.Have you looked on Bizbuysell, Crexi, or Loopnet, to see if there is one that is already going for sale?

I would recommend finding a good PM and contractor first - they're hard to find in that area.

Also you need differentiate your construction costs (hard cost) vs the development costs (soft costs).

. $192 a square foot hard cost with our cost running approximately $157 a square foot. 

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how to actually make this happen in today's world. 

I see too many investors now, put a significant amount of money in rehab costs and over leverage themselves on hard money loans with low down payments, their properties are not selling and they are lucky to just payoff their current hard money loan via a DSCR refinance. 

for movement or settling, 4) Maybe most important because it's so hard to correct...the grading at and around the house.