Local Soil conservation and County Supervisors met.  

I always underwrite my real estate deals conservatively, at today’s higher rate. 

There’s a lot of noise out there, and your post cuts straight through it.believe it or not I am asset rich and income light but it is because 1) I Believe in RE leverage so my cash flow is minimized 2) I am “retired” meaning I have no w2 job, my job is managing our assets.I am still in the hunt for a good RE investment but I am being very selective and most would consider my underwriting conservative (I hope it is conservative but do not think it is very conservative).  

Focus on analyzing deals carefully, running numbers conservatively, and learning from smaller rehabs or rentals before scaling up.

Garry, keep it simple and protect the friendship: structure your friend as a lender with a clear promissory note, lien, and fixed return, not an equity partner; use his funds for down payment and/or rehab gap alongside hard money, and only on a deal where your ARV, rehab, holding costs, and resale timeline leave conservative profit.

In short: $558k gross, ~9% cap, modeled cash-flow of ~$92k/yr with professional management (or ~$140k if self-managed), and conservative 5-yr after-tax proceeds of ~$1.4M.I’m sharing the math, assumptions, depreciation treatment, and the risks/opportunities I saw (value-add ideas, occupancy sensitivity, and market comps).

In short: $558k gross, ~9% cap, modeled cash-flow of ~$92k/yr with professional management (or ~$140k if self-managed), and conservative 5-yr after-tax proceeds of ~$1.4M.I’m sharing the math, assumptions, depreciation treatment, and the risks/opportunities I saw (value-add ideas, occupancy sensitivity, and market comps).

Since we want to be conservative with our underwriting, we found the county’s Property Tax Estimator tool: https://cuyahogacounty.gov/fiscal-officer/departments/budget...Our current thought process:-Look up the correct tax district and current value from county records-Enter the property’s purchase price as the new market value in the estimator-Use the 2026 estimated tax amount for deal analysis, since that’s likely closer to where taxes will eventually adjustFor those of you investing in Cleveland:-Does this approach make sense?

Or is everyone just recasting the T-12 with conservative assumptions no matter what the OM says?

I really like your sensible and conservative approach to real estate investing.