Purchase price: $1,900,000 Cash invested: $2,450,000 The building, “36 South,” is conveniently located next to the Sea Pines Circle and is now home to 48 employees for the Sea Pines Resort.

Now I am leaning towards buying land to build within the inner loop and sell.

Quote from @Gian Pazzia: For properties that small, you should budget $450 per property and use software like the one below from a trusted brand that has been in business almost 25 years. 

Seeing a rent roll, and T-12 or T-24 would be helpful to understand the true Profit of the building.- Although there is no vacancy now, I'd want to see the leases they currently have, especially the commercial lease. 

I no longer qualified for traditional financing because I already own many rental properties and my DTI was high for the bank, so I purchased these in a business entity with a trusted private investor and was able to refi the 1st property/sell the 2nd property to pay back my investor and ultimately keep the better property for zero money down.

Additionally, the latest trend in new construction involves building properties specifically to rent.

What do you consider a small apartment building 4 units or 20 units?  

I have a plan to buy 1 rental property for every 5 builds that we do.

They may be an emerging manager that is a great operator, but simply haven't been around very long, or it could be a very experienced manager with more acquisitions connections (and presumably good deal flow) than investor contacts, so needs to market to build that network to capitalize on the good deals they are finding.That being said, these "off market syndicators", as you call them, are like "off market houses".  

Part of your rent payments can go towards the down payment, allowing you to build up the necessary funds over time while living in the property.