It's unclear to me if your 'ask' is more about buying in (equity stake) in the project or gaining experience.Would be helpful if you can opine.Even if you have desire/ANY experience, I bet you'd be able to help with development. 

@Curt Smith just to be totally clear... renting or leasing, the property owner is responsible for the repairs in both scenarios?

We are yet to talk about total price, as he says, give him a number.

And seriously, sometimes there are truths that I'd just as soon nobody knew about, and you can bet I won't be volunteering that information -- anymore --As to the original question, as originally posed -- you're still better off being completely frank.

However, my house is totally paid off and with the extra money i inherited, i would like to make money with it and start investing in rental properties.

They were awesome to work with and totally understand investment lending.

I seems as simple as telling the seller I am going to add 40K rehab budget to a 60K purchase price so that my purchase shows a total of 100K.

You can totally cut costs and still get a high end feel. 

This was a total rehab of a cape into a colonial. 

Biggest X factor is when we did our walkthrough, we noticed basement ( unfinished) is totally flooded with sitting water ( too high to walk through) and it seems like the water has been sitting there for months.