If the water isn't separately metered, then include the average water bill per month (some bill by the quarter) to the regular monthly rent.Have you checked out rental prices in your area?

This way, we each have a quarter's worth of the income, but we allow ourselves to get started early.

If the property/market you are prepared to live in DOES achieve 2%/m, then of course, while you're living there YOUR living quarters won't generate any income, but if you've bought a 4-plex it should still gross 1.5%/m, meaning it SHOULD cash flow positively even in the first year.Almost invariably here on BP though, Investors don't want to live in "C-D" neighborhoods, but many will invest there, which means they end up justifying why they don't really need positive cash flow for years to come, out of their own (house-hacked) primary.

Quarterly, the C Corp pays the properties' owner (the LLCs) the excess profit.The C Corp give me fringe benefits like wellness plan that reimburses all my out of pocket medical expenses, vehicle mileage use, etc...I could also use that C Corp to get W2 income and contribute to a Qualified Retirement Plan or I could just choose to lower the management fee to just balance the expenses and make a minimum profit to lower taxes.In your situation you are looking at a partnership.

I don't think building an in law quarter will return too much because of high cost of construction- and I think you're exposing yourself to a good amount of risk by doing so because project cost usually runs high, and by the time you're finished the market may be softening creating an instant equity void.  

You need to know how to run and evaluate comparable sales in your local market, you need to know your local market conditions including, but not limited to average DOM, amount of solds vs pendings vs actives and amount of closed sales from the previous 8 quarters to get a good idea of where your market is and where it is likely going.Finding real cash buyers (also part of this equation) is the easy part, finding the real deal with a real spread for a cash buyer is the difficult side of the equation and you only get there by knowing how to properly evaluate ARV's and rehab costs.

Check out her quarterly blog at rentalsinboise.com Cheers 

@Michael Baum our agreed upon amount is feasible for both parties involved. they provide marketing, management, repairs (large and small), staging property, and the agreement is only for a set amount of days (ei...for a quarter to see how things work out) if not ties our severed 

I love the property management programs that @Steve Lawson have put in place that include quarterly visits to the property with a handyman to take care of any maintenance issues for our resident.

Even in one given MLS area prices can differ dramatically for instance here in New Orleans Area 70 which runs parallel along the Mississippi River from the French Quarter downriver less than 2 miles prices can vary greatly depending on location within it.