I have been considering NJ as well as Long Island and would be comfortable in both areas from my experience.  

I currently own two single family homes and one condo and I plan on buying at least one house a year to make my retirement nice and comfortable.

I could have easily gone with particle board melamine, and all mdf doors, but the plywood will be more durable, and less prone to moisture problems, and the hardwood doors will handle wear and tear of my toddler as well.I also am an engineer for a cabinet shop so I can design, program, and cut my on cabinets on a cnc, so I'm a little biased and have a few more choices than most. 

It makes the seller comfortable.

What it comes down to is local knowledge and comfortability in that knowledge.Once you buy your first you will be able to apply that knowledge to that next deal and keep moving forward.

You could designate him the primary lien holder, but the hard money lender who is provide way more $ would have to agree to that. 

Did you design the kitchen based on what you could buy off Craigslist or shopped for a while until you found exactly what you had envisioned?

We need a structural engineer and someone to help us with the design layout of the new kitchen, laundry room, half-bath,and living space and the layout of the Master bedroom and master bath.we are in Greensboro North Carolina so we would like someone local.with an architect be the best person for the interior changes?

Except my own SFH with lanf plot, I have one 90sqm condo built, located on city center, it is an apartment with 2bedrooms and open kitchen+LR, but interior works left unfinished, bought it during design stage.

Along the way we have come along some unforeseen costs that will force us to eliminate some of the design work we had in place.