Still in the "corporate" world as an engineer, but hoping to change that with real estate investing.

I'm not an expert or a civil engineer, but from what I've read, these things are like paint: it's all about the prep work.

You should reverse engineer your offer.  

Be willing to teach and ask questions, like a good financial planner, instead of a car salesman buying cheap for his car lot.Many REIs come from engineering "number crunching" type of skills.The "soft skills" of negotiating with NLP is a major key to success in Seller financing negotiations.  

Understand the fine art of Contract Engineering and creative contract control clauses.Just because you have some money, don't be using all of it to put into real estate, use alternative methods of making offers;Offers subject a study period, one long enough to be able to market and flip the property; this is called cash flow without ownership.Try a Hybrid offer, this is where the seller partners with you (but get your contract right with full disclosures), with a Hybrid offer, the seller will contribute stuff, like repairing the property and put up some money for advertising and take back notes.Try a vertical break up with commercial properties, buy the building, but not the land, lease the dirt with an option to purchase it in the future.

Thirdly, make sure it is near a mayor metropolitan area within 10-45 minute drive.I'm constantly looking for these types of properties to build a McMansion (2800-3900 sqr. ft.) with my pre-engineered panelized home system.

@Ekaterina Stepanova Here is a website about the nano tech facility in Albany.http://www.ceg.org/economic_development/sites/the-college-of-nanoscale-science-and-engineering/

Those are generally handled by a certified engineer inspector.

Engineers stay after hours to do other jobs like guards, mow grass on company property,  etc etc.. 

I'm wanting to build a duplex and have much of the process started as far as my builder in place, engineering underway and multi-family lot in place.