I am a realtor, investor and own a construction company located in College Station, Texas (home of Texas A&M.) 

@Thomas Farrell if you have any experience managing property/construction projects, I would look in to flipping properties and keeping the once that you see an acceptable cashflow on when finished.

Due to increased rates i did not refi so i did not get opportunity to see how an appraiser valued the half bathroom but the comps with same bathroom count had crazy valuation for the additional half bathroom.Taking under utilized space like a work area to add a br where the added br does not put you above the normal for the area can add value.Similar if a neighborhood is virtually all 3 br and 4 br properties and you find a 2 BR, it could be a value add to add the bedroom via new construction.  

You don’t want your lender to go out of business while still holding your construction escrow funds.Can you provide me with the contact info of some recent borrowers?

In my experience it cannot be used as construction funding. 

This has pluses and minuses.If your property is bulletproof such as no framing - cinder block construction, cement floors, gloss white paint slapped on the walls and a cheap window mount AC, then you are in a prime position to make money with S8. 

And then reality kicks in - the construction was painful - finding decent contractors, inflation, scope creep - all the usual **** made worse by the fact that nothing is particularly easy in costa rica besides ordering cocktails.

To be honest, I´m in the Maintenance & Construction for corporate businesses for some US companies in Mexico and we do some Real Estate down here also, but it´s way much different than the US, so I have much to learn from a lot of people around here and as @Julio Gonzalez, I think this is pretty much the right pad and place to start and to break my fears to start all over again from scratchAlso, I´ld like to hear more from @Justin Brickman why he voted for his city, pros and cons, it will help to read from a local...As I said before, thank you all guys for taking the time to write in this post and share some experienceDo you plan to owner occupy. $40k will not get you a non owner occupied San Diego property unless you find some unlikely alternate financing.

Not as much new construction as infill development, so rehabs and rentals will be the turn primarily.

This may be to deliberately prevent discovery of other electrical issues or prevent fire/injury.You will need some form of hard money or construction financing to purchase the property as is, and you will need to get the property occupant-ready to pass an appraisal before permanent financing is on the table.