The property manager should be involved before you buy any property to give input on due diligence, how to increase income and reduce expenses, and to make repairs or improvements to maximize occupancy.Excellent property management is critical to your success before, during, and when planning to sell or refinance.To your success!

I live in the greater Washington DC area.

By providing the necessary funding and covering renovation expenses, we ensured the project stayed on track and within budget, leading to a profitable outcome.

ci=Bismarck&st=Nor...This will help you determine how much demand there is and whether or not you can charge enough to cover your expenses and hopefully produce some cash flow for you.

I live in Stamford, Ct and Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

"The only red flag that stood out is that she strongly discourages flying out to the location and scoping out the property as she said it could get expensive and we could instead use that for a downpayment."

Most home owners are only familiar with California Closets pricing and automatically perceive closet fit outs as being expensive.

We travel for work (healthcare) and chronically live out of MTRs, so it will be our first time operating a shorter term, but won’t be an entirely foreign situation to us.

You need to minimize upfront expenses because 100% of your investment is at risk and lost if the lot is not buildable.My favorite strategy is to locate the property and tie it up for usually no more than $100 for a period of 8-12 months, analyze it myself and if I believe it to have a chance at being buildable I create a permitting plan and market the property to other investors/builders willing to take on the permitting risk.  

Besides putting together the best SOW using accurate/actual quotes as @Peter Mckernan and @Alan Asriants commented above, another key aspect is tracking expenses (bookkeeping) and monitoring the budget throughout the project.