It's a balance.

Build - rent - refinance -repeat. in columbus ohio you are buying old houses that are 1900 or 1920 or 1940 and you are in a sellers market. on the other hand you can source land which is a buyers market and build single family homes or duplex or triplexes that will return by renting and pulling cash out on a DSCR loan and doing it again. there aren't a lot of strategies that do this. flipping is different. so many risks. but when someone has a well oiled machine it's all good and less risk.

New Jersey is town by town with regulations. 

issued guidance saying that you can use LLCs if you get approved to do so.

So if you are doing an addition, you are only contributing to the structure portion of value, not the land value.

It was apprised in its current condition at $378,000. 

There are plenty of ways to do this.  

Having it renovated.

It's all in how conservative you are in your approach to underwriting your deals.Even when a Seller says they've improved the property, the tenants are still tenants and do damage to brand new improved units. 

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?