They will match effort for effort jumping on seller calls and helping you close deals, walk you through contracts, make connections to attorneys, etc.  

Long story short, it has been over a year and the project remained incomplete and he walked away with the money.

If things go south, how would you both be able to walk away?

You are prepared to walk away from a deal.Not going to give you the answer (maybe if you were Army or Air Force) LOL, but here is the approach. 

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

He/She will walk the property with your rehab budget in hand so the more descriptive you can be, the better chance you have at receiving a value in your favor.Once we have the rehab template complete we order the appraisal. 

I would have to have a walk through with a professional to give me an appropriate estimate. 

Walk through the neighborhoods being recommend and ask yourself this very simple question:Would I live here?

Today it would be child abuse of course no one would let a 10 year old go walking through neighborhoods like that..

I just wanted to see if there were any pearls of wisdom floating around of someone who has walked this road.