I have dozens of clients doing this in New Jersey most of which come from no construction background, they simply use preferred vendors we have in place (not GC's) which lowers renovations cost because there is no middle man. 

There were simply too many things about this particular one I do not like so I’m staying away.

just don't do a lease. as others have mentioned, this forces the buyer of the property to take over the lease (if its even allowed/ they qualify) and it certainly does make the property a little tougher to sell. i'm also doing a house hack, and here in CA, its made a world of difference for me. the bulk of our energy usage is in the summer when we want to run the a/c. my bill stays a constant $228/mo (i pocketed the tax credit and simply financed the panels after that grace period). instead of getting an $800 bill in the summer months, we run the a/c at a constant temperature 24/7 on auto, stay comfortable, and i typically get a little bit coming back at the end of the year. don't expect to pocket this "little bit back" by being conservative with your useage, it sort of is a use-it-or-lose-it situation... i think i got $54 back this year.

If you plan to do multifamily in the "Far" suburbs it can be harder to hit your cashflow targets VS city/near burbs simply because there is limited inventory. 

A deal that produced a 25% net IRR to investors with a 1% acquisition fee, 1% asset management fee, simply pref + single tier waterfall, etc, may only produce a 15% net IRR under the current fee and carry structure, if their acq fee went to 3%, pref went down, they now have a GP catchup and multi-tier waterfall giving them higher splits for higher returns, etc.

They’re simply projecting their own incompetence onto you.

Whenever I speak to a group of students interested in real estate, I always stress the importance of networking and simply asking people to coffee.

And compare that to simply refinancing.

Some of the comments above are simply ignorant to what lenders allow and don't.  501c3 falls in the same area as non-recourse loans for the most part. 

Ended off just simply putting a carpet over it.