I am a few weeks in to my 2nd year as a civil engineering major at CSU Chico.

Maybe you can bring an engineer or architect with you to have another viewing of the unit before submitting an offer?   

I am a FT Domestic Engineer (aka holding down the mothership with 3 small children). 

Assuming you are in a major city where it's expensive and assuming you have your construction/architect/re/engineer team and know your construction and real estate inside and out trying to do a small flip in under a year (not buy hold) do you think your better off in the stock market?

I have a BS and MS in Engineering and I design Class III medical devices for a living.   

I did flight test engineering, electronics engineering, etc.

All at high salaries and the company does not generate enough to cover this level of overhead--and none of them work enough to justify their so called full time positions.I know about them as I had hired them to build my boat dock and they did not follow the engineering drawings/approved permit, used number 2 lumber for supports, etc. 

But new engineers making 150+ right out of college with signing bonuses is normal...

I'm a Engineer working full time in New York and I'm interested of how people go about investing out of state in a state that has very low or no cash flow.

In theory they spread out costs instead of having big ones possibly hit you at once.Other risks are burnout, running out of money (usually because of outside issues, personal issues, etc).For me, I've been thinking/evaluating a lot lately the 'opportunity cost' risk of stepping away from engineering and business career to do the real estate stuff.