I say if you can find a loop hole ethically, exploit it as long you aren't doing anything illegal. 

Unless you are planning on building this out as an owner/user, I'd focus on how to exploit a land opportunity.

Don't try and compete with institutional money or large cash offers - find something that is marginalized or overlooked and exploit it. 

So if you have the time to exploit this market inefficiency, and/or are just a freaking top 1% salesperson, absolutely go for the off-market stuff as a buyer, because these aggregate averages aren't relevant to you.

Not enough skin in the game for a lender to your seller's problem and for you to exploit our.

Good luck in your exploits.

Having some capital to exploit a good period isn't a bad idea, but getting some investments now could help you when that period comes.

Account Closed- certainly not implied as to you, but I would hope you could appreciate how this is something that others will be looking to exploit.

I guess in the end it's a personal choice based on your beliefs.I wouldn't want to be involved in projects like that knowing the living conditions.If a quality project was built then that would be different but not slum lording and taking advantage of common people and exploiting them.What you would need to look at is the CYCLE of the boom for jobs and what the picture looks like when the project is complete.Development of large projects can take up to 3 to 10 years to complete and get fully operational from the initial phase of research and development and site selection.Development can have a large risk as by the time the units hit the market other developers could be in the game as well.Then you can have with a market shift going from under saturation to over saturation of product.Then the expected returns you were planning to get could be diminished.Also in the first phase of the project market demands could change changing how you build out the units and increase build out costs and time lines.Yes developers can make big money but they can also lose huge money and I have seen it happen.You have to be very careful with projects like this.

I'm also quite interested in further exploiting the tax benefits of owning a business (rather than paying yourself a high salary as the owner, push money into a 401k to lower your tax bill, etc.)