Also@Jed Butikofer as@Christian Chartier said, this area has great potential for investment.

thanks for your time and help rent to retirement works directly with build to rent developers like us around the country once they are framed up. you are buying properties pretty much at market value but with a hand holding. you can work directly with a builder or directly with them. they are just an intermediary. they take 5% on what we make as a builder but have a large list of investors and a systemized approach to selling new builds. if you want to get a better deal I'd recommend directly contacting builders and building it yourself. fly to the market. spend 2 days, tour new builds, get a feeling for how it's going. if your builder isn't building multiple at a time then I wouldn't recommend working with them. rent to retirement is a well oiled and well run machine. they've had their ups and downs with dozens of transactions in florida but modified their process. they are well known and established and transparent. if you have a more specific market and feel confident in your ability to vet deals try it out. happy to talk more my info is in my signature. we work directly with them to sell new builds and no organization is perfect but I have good things to say about them as a builder and potential build to rent developer that sells build to rent triplexes and single family homes through them to end buyers in California like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego 

EDUCATE YOURSELF - yes, it will take time, but will lead to a selection that better meets your expectations & avoids potentially costly surprises!

Once I've completed these initial projects and built up some capital, my long-term goal is to transition into buy-and-hold investments in potentially more affordable markets to maximize cash flow and scale up.Right now, I'm particularly interested in investing locally here in the Seattle metro area.

This allows for deferral of capital gains taxes until December 31, 2026, with potential reductions in the taxable amount if held long-term.

That's 50k a year gone and you are losing tax write-offs and equity potential.

How can we best protect ourselves from potential retaliation and property damage?

We could build larger, but there will be less Buyers and the home can potentially sit for longer and holding costs get expensive.Not saying building larger is wrong, but just giving you our reasoning for our home size.But I do 100% agree with you. 

NJ is a big one—places like Newark, Paterson, or even smaller towns have better cash flow potential.

Potential cash flow How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?