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

Once you build it correctly, you can offer it to other investors as a service.

@Andrae S Wiggins recommend you upgrade your BP membership to Pro to access the BP Calculators to evaluate rental purchases.Play with the numbers to figure out the purchase price that gives you your target ROI.That's the number you'll need to make an offer at, NOT what the seller is asking.Yes, you will get a lot of rejects, but whoever said investing was easy?

I've found that CPAs that focus on a niche area such as real estate rather than offering general services to everyone are typically much more knowledgeable about real estate tax incentives.

On most any day you could find people walking dogs, or children playing in the area.

So, this is less than a downpayment but it also offers a way to really diversify your investments. 

What are you offering?

This is as simple as going through neighborhoods and finding distressed properties, and learning how to make them offers.

Small multi-family properties starting at over $1M, which is pretty expensive and, resale single family (before year 2000) offer minimal cash flow (~$200-300/month).2.

Slightly increased the offer to quickly go under contract, but still had inspections and everything done before completing the deal.