Your gain is your sales price minus your purchase price, adjusted for closing costs and improvements.

I also don't believe that an asset should be costing you money every month. 

Keep in mind to be competitive in most markets today with HML when your up against Lima one or Kiavi a default is generally not going to make you money its going to cost you money.

Swinging in these cities are big costs and extremely high risk. 

That $50-100 nightstand will cost 2-3X+ more once you factor in the labor for someone to assemble it, multiplied by 2 for every bedroom.

Stay away from them at all costs.

As soon as the house is built, I want to start a new build on this lot to sell as a spec house, budgeting approx $450k build cost, sale price is estimated $750k, supported by comps.

The biggest mistake I see is to worry too much about the cost of things like lawn mowing and water bill and the exact percentage for vacancies, but not being enough aware of the general condition of the property - resulting in 20k, 50k or more in capex a few years down the road.My advice: look for a quality property that has all the big-ticket items already done.

This isnt true -- but with anything, convenience costs. 

Rehab project was supposed to cost $50k.