source_impr...Depending on your goals (using it for you and your family a few times a year and hoping it pays for itself, parking some cash for a few years and hoping for appreciation or strictly cash flow) will determine what size home and what your budget should be.

When I first started my monthly budget was $500-1000 a month, closed 8 deals my first year.

Your budget should deal with preventative or regular maintenance and emergency repairs.

I can’t afford to pay him for a lousy job and stay on budget. 

We have seen a few properties that are within our budget, but would obviously do some more thorough analysis on the properties before pulling the trigger.On the other hand, we have been more interested in STR's since we planned to start investing in real estate.

Eliminate debt, establish a budget, and save.

Budget at or under 400K. 

Therefore if you purchase in say September, your current years tax bill will be based on the current years value which may be even lower than what you can achieve with the exemption and on investments the value will be updated according to your ATI and will not be reassessed by the county for five years as well as once it is, the increase is capped to a 15% increase in value which is not common and can be appealed which is less often than many other states.Yes, the effective tax rate comes out to a difference of say 0.5% on personal residence to 3.0% on investments, but I would say handling it the right way up front and budgeting for it in your analysis is better than risking it another way.

Unfortunately, this relationship did not turn out the way we had hoped, and after falling short of their budgets and projections, we terminated them and proceeded to build out our own property management company to manage the facilities in the fund.

We learned about construction budgets & draws, hard money loans, and how to choose upcoming neighborhoods.