Both of your invest strategies above I don’t consider as RE investment.  

One idea he had, was to re-sale with cleared permits etc for a four plex. 

Looking at the same thing and while there was good discussion re: rent control, which can be found here -- http://www.ucnj.com/web_content/pdf/ordinances/Rent-Stabilization-Ordinance-2017.pdf, no one answered the original question re: condo conversion.

Re-read your contracts, document your correspondence (and attempts) with your builder and demand documentation to match up any payments/draws with what's actually been competed on your build.

That is the safest and easiest way to start in RE.

I'm new to RE and I'm interested in attending some quality meetups. 

I had been using Stessa, which I really loved, but it is buggy and the banking connection to Chase was continually breaking, which I needed to re-connect, but when I did that I had to go through 200+ transactions and re-allocate the expenses. 

They tend to get people to attend their seminars that have no understanding of RE Investing and think that they have to "pay to play".  

Continuous participation.This is great if you are talking about an SMB with effectively connected Real Estate.Note rental activity is considered passive unless you meet the RE Pro threshold of 750 hours and more than 1/2 your time.This is the conundrum for passive real estate investors.If you have a full-time job or a large, time-consuming business it can be difficult or impossible to qualify.A huge loss from depreciation if you have one LP investment isn’t going to do anything for you.

It never hurts to get re-advised on such things so I really appreciate you getting back to me with such a detailed response.