The red tape and hoops that you have to deal with can be a nightmare and cause months of delay before you even touch a tree much less break ground.Also I agree with Devon, some architects do not live in reality (as a building contractor I live with it all to much) so it is important that you have a product to produce that you can not only sell in your market, but you can tweak and add value engineering to as you learn to construct your product, this can be equated to time or material, and is in my opinion the number one reason you would consider recreating a building multiple times and only change the façade. 

I am already ingesting tons of material and knowledge every day about the subject but would love to inspire members to share how they got started out.

Plumbers, Drywallers, Framers...)I would go to material supplies stores, excluding Home Depot and Lowes.

The extra money the seller has on the line is usually a great motivator.Being a conservative investor, the one thing that would stop me from closing (even with a good escrow agreement and plenty of cash to cover the cleanup) would be a situation I considered to have a reasonable risk of someone getting injured or killed due to the nature of the material left behind and easy access to it.

Furthermore, whatever material I am unfamiliar with, I have been researching and studying nightly.

The difference in price of material may not be that significant. 

I use 3 categories - mileage, meals, materials, and just drop the receipt expenses into each.

The biggest issue w the stock market right now is companies are posting growth and profits but their stock is continuing to drop based on oil prices, raising and lowering of the dollar value, external factors like greece and china.

If you have good credit and your family members are not marking up material there is a game I used to play with credit cards.First get a credit card that has 0% interest on purchases for 6 months and you purchase the materials on that card.

Assume $5-20K, depending on location, size of property, building materials used, etc.