Investors, curious to hear: what’s the toughest budget overrun you’ve dealt with mid-project, and how did you handle it?

For a 3BR/2BA STR, I typically see budgets land between $15K–$25K depending on design goals.

Inbound marketing, direct to seller is where the money is at.Most investors I speak with get leads from SEO, which are the most motivated seller leads & close around 1 in 10 leads to a deal, but it's definitely a long-term play.If you have a good follow-up and sales process in place, PPC or PPL is great to supplement while you're waiting for SEO to kick in (3-12 months depending on market & competition).A couple of different wholesalers on Youtube say they are spending $50,000 a month to keep things going with SEO, PPC and PPL.

I went significantly over my budget estimate; more than I thought I would ever go over budget.  

In that scenario, activities like direct tenant communications, dealing with turnovers, coordinating with attorneys, contractors, and vendors feel like they should fall under the “material participation” bucket, since the investor is actively running the portfolio.That’s also what I meant when I asked which platforms/tools most RE investors use to spend the bulk of their time managing these day-to-day activities — since those hours are what typically count toward eligible material participation.Your context on how the IRS distinguishes between investor-type vs. operational activities is super valuable — thanks again for laying it out so clearly.

Let’s break it down as it applies to Dallas and your $400k budget:1.

But you can get a 3-4 bedroom house, rent out the other rooms while you live there and will probably get further ahead.Look at your current expenses and see what you can do to pay down your existing debt as you mention it is restricting how much you can borrow-see if you can increase your income and work on saving more (and spending less) to get to where you need to be faster.  

I am a beginner, I tend to spend too much time thinking and analyzing before taking action.

Before you buy anything you need to spend a ton of time before offering and during your inspection period figuring out all your expenses, deferred maintenance, and future maintenance items as best as you can.

If you are doing performing loans, depending on your budget I would also consider private lending - you typically will find borrowers with higher credit scores when doing private lending (if you do it right).You can also do non performing loans (Which is what we do), but those are a completely different animal to performing.