One of my connections will fund the rehab for less and give it all to us on the upfront to finish the project at a lower cost.

If you have excellent credit and enough for a down payment/closing costs without totally wiping out your funds, I say go for it!

Yes, you personally aren't living there, but with high crime comes unqualified tenants and high maintenance costs (stolen materials, broken windows, etc.).

I assume a higher upfront cost as far as land purchase and the actual build but you would have a brand new house, instant equity and hopefully maintenance free for quite a while.

Here's an article with FAQs including the cost of a study.

Alternatively, if I can find a lower cost single fam home where I can cash out 100% of my investment I would do that but those have been harder to find recently. 

But from a moral & ethical perspective, you may want to decide at some point to just eat it and accept write it off as cost of doing business.

Just kidding (sort of).A lawsuit will cost you $25,000 to $125,000 and a year and a half of your life.

We did get much lower costs when we changed to minisplits but the initial cost is high.

Quote from @Daniel Gould: So it appears to me that while there's a free plan available to anyone in Invelo but the BP Pro membership includes access to the "Starter" Plan which currently costs $41/month otherwise - so this is a notable "value add" to the BP Pro Plan.