I'm a big proponent of using sites like homeadvisor, thumbtack, porch, etc to find contractors, but for the life of me I can't seem to find a decent contractor to do drywall finishing or stucco a project that we're completing. 

I honestly don’t recommend this for you just cause you don’t seem experienced enough to successfully pull this off and the downfall is wasting an investors time, whatever appraisal will cost you, and losing an investor with tons of possible future deals because you bit more than you can chew on your first deal with him.

As a result there is a very real danger that hosts will be penalized, receive bad reviews on social media, and even lose their accounts on Airbnb/VRBO which could quite realistically cost them their businesses if no consideration is given to grandfathering in owners and hosts who are already operating more than one STR per lot, not to mention it seems fair to give owners and tenants a chance (as was mentioned) to recoup their significant investments (as one neighbor mentioned--her life savings) which they made under the existing laws." 

If you provice me with an email address I'll forward to her via the Upwork site and she'll reach out to you.And hope your home—and those close to you—survived the floods!

What i'm wondering is if it makes sense to try to negotiate the cost of DEMO against the value of the property - my plan is to sink a few thousand bucks and a few weeks of work into the house and live in it while working on the site plan and building out the second house for my parents. 

At any rate, when I finally found a 'good deal', my wife said she was 'fed up' with hearing me lose out on so many properties and she encouraged me to purchase the property for a higher price (to win the bid I mean). 

If the deal goes South, do you lose your fiance or does she lose her best friend?

I’m very excited to learn from this site and network with others.

I’m very excited to learn from this site and network with others.

Making 5 grand sure beats losing 5 grand .