Knowing construction and building codes are critical to building credibility. 

In any case, any offer to lease or purchase the property made to the landowner should be tied to milestones that you lay out in the form of a short critical path which is used to define the amount of time you need to obtain project entitlements and get to a shovel ready state and hence the Closing Date. 4.  

(here come the critics)...

This makes the whole aspect of finding ways to buy properties at a discount a critical component of learning how to make money in real estate these days.

So as a new member, I would love to hear your advice/criticism. 

We have always had a maintenance director, we knew we needed to spend the money to scale and grow the business, we saw that in order for us to give not only our investors/clients the best experience, but response time to tenants is equally critical.

Predicting a 2x or 3x appreciation with a 10-15 year horizon seems like a bet I'd like to be on the other side of at the current moment.Buying a condo versus renting one seems like a solid plan, but in my opinion some of the critical assumptions are off.  

That's probably more critical than a rent roll.For a 4 unit deal, you probably can do without a lawyer.

Also work towards finding a reputable contractor as you are aware this is critical.

To @Ivan Barratt's point above: educating yourself on the various strategies is critical, so you don't jump into something with a wrong-fit partner/type/market, etc and find yourself down $200k.a few options come to mind: private lending ("be the bank")investing as a Limited Partner in a syndication (most options only open to Accredited investors)turnkey rental investing (granted, i think of this more as "semi-passive" since you still have to manage the property manager, requires a phone call or email every other month or so. at least, that's been our experience)you mentioned "no desire/skills to be come a landlord" and I think that's a reasonable expectation IF, you focus heavily on your skills that focus on the analysis and decisioning at the front-end. said simply: it's likely worth picking a strategy and then focusing your limited time/effort on developing the following: goal - have you set them?