He's a land planner and I'm an engineer (licensed in NC) and we are also looking for land deals to develop in the area. 

Originally posted by @Emma Chen:We will of course get our own inspector and possibly a structural engineer to check it out, but what we want to know is taking on a property with these sort of issues considered a bit risky for the cash flow that we're expecting to generate?

Any mentors who are near Jersey City, New York City, heck even Long Island, and that are interested in sharing knowledge in exchange for reduced cost IT support (I am a server engineer by trade) or photography (my fiancé is one) I'd love to chat.

As mentioned, any lender is going to require experience of the folks doing the work, that property is their collateral, so how would they know that a music teacher or IT engineer can hang doors that close, windows that open, cabinets that won't fall off the wall or that a ceiling won't fall in?

As a mom I wanted him to go to school and get a degree as an engineer, project manager, or something, but he hates school.

You can have a list with a million people, no deal, no check.Reverse engineer it.

I have BS in engineering from a state school...my student loan debt is egregious.  

You will also want to be on top of all of your inspections and have final C of O before you let the buyer do their engineer inspection.

I'm going to school for mechanical engineering (I plan on working in the oil and gas industry).

My wife and I looked into constructing a commercial property out of them thinking that the price would at least be the same as stick construction and look cool, but found out that in the city the engineering requirements to get approval from Planning and Development more than offset any underspend in materials.Engineering companies would only quote us on a time and material basis because they could not predict how much re-work the city would have, or if it would even be technically feasible.