While I didn't appreciate this saying at the time, I found it to be extremely beneficial when I arrived at my first duty station.

Unfortunately, this Tennant is extremely under market rent, approximately 800 below market rents.

Drop the rent to the highest level that will still allow it to be occupied at all times.Be extremely vigilant about keeping the properties occupied at all times.

INTENTION: Buy @ $280,000, rent both sides at or above $1,000 after 1 year.THE MARKET: It was still a Seller's market in OKC, but not extreme like FL, CA, TX, etc...FINANCING ACQUIRED: - HELOC $95,000 variable interest used for down-payment paid by my LLC.- 30-yr Interest-Only (for 5 yrs) loan through Park Place Finance LLC (found in Bigger Pockets network) who sold the loan in 3-4 months on the secondary market to another loan company (that's how these companies make money).

I think shooting for $10k-$20k is extremely risky!  

Any advice/ thoughts/ insights would be extremely helpful as this is our first deal and we don't want to TOTALLY screw up! 

Our strategy is to be EXTREMELY confident/conservative about the ARV and then shoot for $40k or 10% profit margin.

One quick tip but very valuable, be extremely strict on your tenant selection.

If you are expecting this knowledge to be free, please stop thinking in terms of “The lottery mindset” where no effort or extremely tiny effort is needed to achieve a huge return.

The main lesson on this project would be to make sure your construction budgets are extremely conservative.