My heart is sinking.  

Those added populations of those areas bring it to ~1.3M people within about a 30 minute drive to heart of the city.

@Bill - I know that written words don't always come across as the writer intends, so I definitely don't take it to heart.

Lake Erie though holds a special place in my heart that nothing will ever supplant.  

Hi Kent, From what I have been told, in Willow Glen, if you assume a $400/sq foot build cost and average buy cost of over $600/sq foot, you should be able to boost the value of your residence by most if not all of the construction costs.  

I also rented my personal house for a year once and was going to build my own rentals as a next phase…….but 2010-2011 happened.Over the last 8 years - post debacle - I re-directed and poured my heart/soul/everything into bootstrapping the turn-around of a small mfg business that is still turning around (overnight successes take 20 years!) 

Is there a large pool of  competitor vanity homes sitting un-rented for $7,000 a month competing for that same renter pool.What is your appetite for risk right now: "Faint heart never won fair lady" or "pass on this".

Somehow despite  there having the best interest of their “client” at heart their solution to every financial question is to purchase insurance.I, like most people, have nothing against insurance, or insurance salespeople.

It can be done IF:1) You spend a lot of time finding actual below market deals2) Use other peoples moneyStill, NOT easy and not for the faint of heart.

If you are a heart surgeon making $300,000 a year and carrying no debt, then a reserve is probably unnecessary because you could probably replace a roof or two without even dipping into a reserve.It's not easy but you need to put pen to paper and figure out what kind of losses would be "worst case" and how much you would have to set aside to handle those situations.