I would like to put my organisational and people skills to good use and my architectural experience will be a great bonus.

Get a property in one of your names and that will set you up to avoid unwanted headaches should anything go wrong between you two (hopefully not!). 

Northern California as it is a great area for buying/selling unwanted rural land.

I work in a shelter where hundreds od beautiful UNWANTED Dogs are killed each week. 

You don’t want to end up with an unwanted tenant.The alternative would be a double market rent, paid in advance for 3 months, applied to the purchase if the closing occurs within “X” days of the scheduled closing.

Northern Wisconsin is full of fantastic “unwanted” rural land deals.

It brushes up with some rough areas but given its strong Italian Heritage, the town does a good job of keeping the unwanted out. 

As far as some the non-vocational advantages of getting your engineering degree it is the ability to design and implement effective and organised process and logically find solutions to challenging problems.  

@Hugues Armand-Delille is organising a get together of people in Berlin at https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/25/topics/398....

Has the appraiser organised a site inspection with you?