They make their money off of real estate agents, but real estate agents are the worst people to make money off because they are highly unreliable and in and out of the business when the market changes.Their target should be the consumer with higher levels that they can subscribe too for data, since Zillow is linked to the MLS now which makes their data somewhere more reliable.

So, there is even more risk.The things that you can do, include being properly capitalized, not be greedy, (in whichever way that may be defined in the county you are buying), know solicitation laws, know Dodd-Frank, the Consumer Protection Act, the S.A.F.E.

It's expected and common for MTRs to have utilities included.

But consumers sued them all too many times and for too much money.

.- Working a W2 as a firefighter, posting and consuming content- Leaving my W2 to dive deep into real estate investing and working as an agent... and still watching/posting content all while business was ok - Deleting social media apps (one have one on my phone that I use 10 minutes or less a day), diving deep into building my business and skills which have drastically increased due to pure focus and increasing my business significantly- moral of the story... focus on the things you need to do in business (dollar productive activities) and life experiences while reducing consumption will increase your success  

This means building a budget that includes setting aside funds for your next investment.

It took a lot to comply with their permit expectations and was frustrating and time consuming.

We actually CAN'T explain what we are seeing if we are operating on the "purely rational actor" hypothesis (as you implicitly observe), we MUST include highly irrational and emotional individuals to explain what we are seeing.- Investor uncertainty.

Sometimes, buying an existing property can be more cost-effective and less time-consuming and maybe require slightly less permits, etc. 

If I may, a lot of the issues we are running into with insurance is that consumers no longer use insurance as a catastrophic fall back but rather, they nickel and dime on small claims that compund into larger issues.