One way or another you are going to pay for your "tuition" - either a. being scammed by gurus hoping they will teach you the "secrets" on how to become a millionaire in your first year/month/property/flip/deal, or b. while doing mistakes in your first projects/deals (but at least you get something out of it and is the best form of education)  or c. putting a lot of time, effort and resources in learning about real estate investing industry (and that includes marketing, financing, negotiation, contracting/legal, taxation, hiring, project/people/property management, etc.).

I've worked on many residential construction projects as an Architect throughout Westchester County including for my own home.

How mature is her project plan and does she have sub contractors lined up?

A lot of agents will be pretty aggressive in their proforma (projection of what they say a property could make), and the numbers may not be realistic.Lauren

Luckily, we had presented this project to another lender earlier and they were willing to fund the land last minute. 

@Alfred Torres to second @Joshua Enriquez , Michael Ortega is currently working on a project for a client of mine and the process has been a breeze because of it.

If you don't want tenants next door, slowly work on fixing up the other side and use it as storage until you move out and on to the next project.

I am starting to do some rehab projects in the area as well and even considering a house hack myself.  

If the agent had a property manager contact, and it seems like the condo can rent out with cash flow, id start interviewing that a project manager and go from there. 

Then each project we do is an LLC under that.