The Milwaukee region has done what many urban areas have done, which is develop the suburbs while the urban core erodes.

Ideally there would be a way to work some cash flow into this deal to offset loans or ultimately provide an additional source of income for them in their retirement.Having poked around on BP for a while and listened to copious podcasts, I have come up with a rough strategy:Get home equity loan on existing property for around $300-$400KUse loan money for 20% down payment on two properties: one SFR for them somewhere cheaper in the SGV like Rosemead or El Monte, and one multifamily for us to house-hack within 30 minutes or so of downtown (El Sereno, Highland Park, USC area, Inglewood?)

Look at the contractor's own contracts, if he or she does not have their own contracts then they are not truly serious about their business and is a red flag to me.If you do want to take the risk of using a cheap general contractor or using cheap subcontractors then I would develop your own master agreement for your contractors and have them sign it in order to let them know what the standard is.

I'm really excited to see what's going to happen in terms of development and real estate.

This again allows you to maintain control and have transparency with where your money is going.To wrap everything up I will give an example of what Gear'd Development does.1. walk through with client and review of the scope of work.

I was trying to start out by hiring a contractor to rehab my current residence and maybe develop a relationship for future deals. 

Hello BP,I have stumbled across a prime piece of commercial land that would be profitable to develop as multifamily apartments or retail space.

You would do better by developing a ongoing relationship with a mortgage broker rather than a specific lender.

We had to develop a filtering mechanism, otherwise I would keep chasing my tail underwriting every single deal that came to market. 

Ideally everyone has vacated but if not you should immediately start eviction.