All the best, Steven  If you're going to do a partnership or even a joint venture agreement I would highly suggest using a competent lawyer to draft your business agreement.

On the flip side, if you've got a bunch of Section 8 tenants living in a building that's in a neighborhood where a lot of the tenant base has good jobs, high credit scores, and are generally reliable people, you've got the most risky tenants in that tenant base and that ain't what ya want.

Contractors, unless you have a working relationship with them, normally do not want you bouncing ideas off them.Understand what their hourly rate is, have a discussion with them that you are okay with paying them an hourly rate if they walk the property with you and provide you a scope of work along with an explanation of what you can/can't get away with in regards to improvements.ask them if you go with them, if they can credit you the amount that you paid.Once you develop a working relationship with a few contractors, you can bounce ideas off them and expect quality responses.I do not invest in New York.Best of luck. 

The deduction is optimized as values increase and can potentially offset the entire net investment (including down payment) for high wage earners.

Expenses seem abnormally high on this as it's not a nightly property.

We've sold 65+ homes and the biggest request we get from our Buyers is help with closing costs.Most of our deals we're providing anywhere between $5K-$10K to help Buyers offset the cash requirement to purchase a home.Even in today’s "high" interest rate environment, many Buyers prioritize closing cost assistance over an interest rate buydown.

Some of the materials we choose and asked him to pick up (such as flooring) he replaced with low quality materials, I assume to keep more of our money for himself. 

Real estate agents are not highly regulated in Costa Rica as opposed to North America.  

If the proposed loan is too risky because (1) chance of default is too high and or (2) cost of foreclosing too high or time it takes too long and we would otherwise decline the loan, we might offer to purchase the subject property for a price equal to the loan amount.  

They are highly secretive however - no online presence under their names while being very tech-advanced, they also installed like seven cameras around the house perimeter.