Your lender is confused because he's one of the overwhelming majority that goes an entire career without learning anything but how to finance single family homes for married couples intending to live there, which is the overwhelming majority of mortgages written.

Owner states house has no major issues currently (will be getting appraisal and inspection) only,cosmetic repairs may be needed.

Caution:Contracting for repair, maintenance, remodeling, or improvement by any person licensed under part I of chapter 475 (real estate agent) while acting as the owner’s agent pursuant to that license, where all work requiring a contractor is performed by a contractor who has a current, valid certificate or registration issued under this part to perform such work, and where the aggregate contract for labor, materials, and all other items is less than $5,000; however, this exemption does not apply: (a) If the maintenance, repair, remodeling, or improvement is a part of a larger or major operation, whether undertaken by the same or a different contractor, or in which a division of the operation is made in contracts of amounts less than $5,000 for the purpose of evading this part or otherwise.For the sake of your cousin's license, either make her a part owner (sharing the gross profit as her compensation) or get a GC on the job asap.Just a helpful hint to keep a fellow real estate agent out of jail. 

A bit ironic as I think most on here would agree that the majority of agents don't understand/participate in real estate investing.

However, most major cities will have one. 

The only "savings" is if you were coming from another private, untraded syndicate with high fees (which isn't that common for the majority of people on BP). 

Are the units in rentable condition  right off the back  or would they require any major attention before being able to rent?

Jerome Ave rezoning was just approved a month ago or so and word has it the Kingsbridge Armory renovation is about to be approved as well. 2 familys are great bc the bronx still have relatively low prices compared to the rest of NYC but rents are still HIGH so if you have a rented unit....the monthly mortgage burden is not that bad. we bought our house for 390k 3 years ago and in total we needed about 17k cash from offer to closing. the vast majority of that was just the 3.5 down payment. i negotiated to have the seller pay our closing costs and again no real estate agents were used. best of luck in your search. 

I would video a walk through of the house showing the 20 major components of a rehab and place that video link on Craigslist.

If so, it seems like they are not marketing to the vast majority of potential buyers (because even these big players have <20% market share in any given market).