I'm currently helping an E5 engineer with a house hack in the college area out here in San Diego. 

The issue was electrical and a licensed electrician made the repair on a GFCI in a bathroom. 

Those types of syndications (such as Cardone) are typically very aggressively underwritten (meaning higher execution risk), have sponsors who don't have full real estate cycle experience (meaning higher sponsor risk), have higher leverage ( meaning higher risk of default or suspended distributions), use floating rate loans ( meaning higher interest rate risk), have short-term debt ( meaning higher refinance risk), use financial engineering (meaning higher risk of missing the pro forma), lack signficant (or any) skin in the game (meaning higher risk of lack of alignment with conservative investors ). etc.And it's 100% true that most of these are struggling now.

the challenges with flips  is that there are so many angles to try and cover / consider that it is somewhat like spokes on a wheel… even if you just take it system by system… roof, plumbing, AC, foundation, subfloors, electrical, appliances, septic, materials expenses, holding costs, taxes, etc.  

He inspected it as though it was on permit, but did not mandate it being on the permit (example drywall, new electrical in places other than new bathroom, etc).   

Offering port-a-potties, well or cistern for water, and some amount of electrical power and wifi located strategically will be enough at first.

He has now asked me to pay the contractors for the first stage, about 24 lots, for dirtwork, sewage, roads, curbs, electric in exchange for some of the lots.

The major factors like the roof, furnace, plumbing, electrical upgrades, and foundation repairs are all examples of costly expenses you'll want to inspect before closing the deal.

@Anthony Vander Meer Does the rent include electricity, heat or hot water?

Utilities, site upgrades, engineering?