The convenience of this far outweighs the risks. 

This question has been asked so many times here, you can find many responses by doing a search on your question.The only down side is the costs to get and hold it which are totally outweighed by your commission income assuming you execute a deal or deals to cover said costs.

When your 2019 taxes are in & processed by the IRS, your income calculation will be based on either 2019/2018 average, or just 2019, but either way 2017 will be completely disregarded as a data point.No reason to bark up the HML or non-qm trees when you can just wait a month or two, the benefits of the "Great Deal" you are looking at in terms of getting 7% off fair market value, or another $150/mo in cashflow from that, will be FAR outweighed by the rate/points/fees/etc that come with a HML or non-qm.

Then more financing to actually build the house(s) up.The costs of this project probably far outweigh any potential profits they would realize on this.Thoughts?

The risks far outweigh the benefits.

The administrative overhead of a corporate tax entity would outweigh any potential benefits if you're starting from nothing.Best of luck.

The costs of construction will far outweigh the cost of the land/structure.

I understand the risks of out of state investing and they outweigh the risk of losing someone else's money!

I live here in Pittsburgh and love it, weather isn't the best but everything else outweighs that haha.as far as areas to avoid, I feel like there might be some kind of crime map based on reported crimes in a certain geographical area.

However it’s in a not so great neighborhood, does the neighborhood and type of tenants outweigh the amount of knowledge and experience I can gain from taking this deal.