I bought a house that has low spots in the lawn where water pools (attracting mosquitos), more weeds than grass, and the front walkway, driveway, porch, and garden pavers look like Frankenstein's monster.

The large backyard can be divided and I can build another single family dwelling on it which is allowable by local zoning laws.  

Even in a down market, your buyer pool for each individual home is exponentially larger than any multi-family property, and there are more avenues of funding available for more people to buy your home - even those that normally couldn't qualify for a $500 credit card.

We would keep and rent this house out BUT, we have a pool surrounded by Huge hackberry trees and 3 months out of the year, we are cleaning pool traps 6 times a day.  

Hi,So my friend is building a ~600 sq foot ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) in their backyard to be rented out as a "private residence" (think of it like a 1 bedroom studio/apartment with its own living space/bedroom/bathroom. 

I have a 32 rental units and plan on moving into apartments I am at the stage where I am going to try and get off/reduce hard money and bank and create a pool of private investors.

We also added a new roof, demolished two large chicken coups in the backyard, built stairs up to the rear French doors and cleaned up the yard.Taking a look at the numbers, we purchased the house for a little under $160,000 and had a renovation budget of $25,000.

On HOA fees... yes, they can be a huge expense but... they often cover expenses like building insurance, grounds upkeep, pools, lazy rivers, beach access, cable, water and trash.

@Jonathan Toruno in a case like this the house will have a very limited buyers pool so I would reach out to a couple of buyers and get their opinion before you try to get the house under contract.

I would prefer to stay in my own back yard (North Jersey - Central Jersey), but I would love to speak to someone already investing in the area.