The training to become a land surveyor seems fairly minimal and surveys cost at least several hundred dollars for a few hours work.

A retail contractor deals more with one offs such as home owner remodels, an investor friendly contractor is expecting to do multiple jobs and stay busy, thus keeping their subs busy, and will do the work for less of an upcharge.Once you have those two numbers figured out then it's just plug and play like stated above.

I play dumb when I meet contractors, I guess I do that to sorta gauge their honesty.

You can look up the name of entity you want to register on Texas Secretary of State website, and if it is Unique, and you have a valid Tax ID, ( or your personal number - if you know what I mean),  you can be fairly certain to get the entity registered.  

generally a waste of time.. but you can always ask.. lots of work with probably more money owed than what you think. and poor lady is probably more stubborn than you think.. and she will probably call 10 I buy homes for cash people and work the best deal she can.no equity sub too is a terrible play in my mind.. why do it..

If your owner doesn’t play I would route for the following...The following strategy might be an interim idea hat gives you the option to test all waters.

I’m a house flipper and one of the reasons I am currently studying to get my license is because I no longer like playing the waiting game for my realtor.

I'm thinking of buying a Condo in a fairly popular tourist destination a couple blocks off the beach in Hawaii.

Stay out of the big cities and try to find areas that have several small towns that tend to be fairly close to each other (say 5 or 10 miles each. 

The cool guy trend seems to be towards Multi-Family, but I do not think it's the best option.MF:1) It's getting played out.