It was actually under contract with a contingent offer for months, so I suspected something may be up because at the time the velocity of transactions was insanely high in my area and closing times were as low as a week.

Self performing can reduce your costs which may help your initiative but you have to weigh the time that goes into the rehab against lost production at your W2 job. 

U want your parents to talk to their CPA FIRST.. if they go the development route they are now ( depending on the amount of units) creating inventory.. which will be taxed at ordinary income rates ( very HIGH)if they just sell they can 1031  and move on to something else.. many times when you run the math consider the risks of a partnership.. the sale of the land is far better than thinking your going to make some profit.. 

After hearing about those tax court cases and that REPS is highly litigated, I hope my friends re-examine their time logs and delete those webinar and Zoom office hours.

Or did it take some time for your property to establish a high volume of website visits, good reviews etc?

They can be complementary but don't perform the same way.

I like to provide the fix and flip opportunities to local investors, and the stabilized cash flowing rental units to both local and out of state investors who are looking to add this type of product to their portfolios, as there are several, high quality full-service property management companies in the area. 

If it’s a stable population with good roads, restaurants, schools, hospitals, etc…it’s very likely there is low turnover due to high tenant retention rate.

So, to repair the damages of a weak performance last year I went back to my system and closed more deals.

With the current high interest rate environment you're looking at probably double the interest rate and if you're making just enough to live I'm guessing your DTI is pretty high so you're not going to get premium rates.