The truck you bought will instantly lose value the moment you drive it off the lot, it will depreciate over the years due to the miles you rack up on it and the normal wear and tear of a vehicle.

Purchase price: $38,000 Cash invested: $25,000 2 story 3 on 1-1/2 with an unfinished basement and 2 car garage.

Does this sound like a normal timeline for closing in NYS?

An assumed VA loan would plug in place of the new property purchased in this example.Also, you have a one-time option to have your VA loan eligibility restored regardless of how much you have used; normally you have to dispose of the property, meaning sell or pay-off to have it fully restored.

Buy the house as you normally would, then once it is yours, draw up a lease agreement for whoever you are renting it to-even if it is family that you are renting to.

I've done everything in residential real estate (wholesale, rehab, normal rentals, short-term vacation rentals, turnkey, property management, private lending). 

If this property had been in one of the areas zone for more density they would surely have done a normal "Seattle six-pack" of 0-lot-line townhouses but instead they short platted 2 lots to still in effect end up with a six-pack even though in an area not zoned for it, at the cost of having to sell units as condos and deal with other ADU limitations (e.g. 1000sf limit).In 2023 the State mandated Seattle-style ADU regulations across all urban growth area cities/counties, going even a bit further (2 of any combination of attached/detached allowed).

Removed all of the junk in the car port and painted the exterior.

When I left, apart from the normal political shenanigans, it was very well run with a strong government presence, military renters, and organic business growth that wasn't dependent on tech cycles, credit crunches, etc.

There were a couple times that car problems came up and we skipped payments, so they never really got that far ahead.