It’s a beautiful old house and would be a real gem if it was restored, but I don’t have the funds or a credit score good enough to get a loan that big (without an insane amount of interest tacked on).I’m hoping to turn someone on to it who loves restoring old properties, or start investing in a group that does and tell them about my house and invest as a team.

Since she was a first time homebuyer we were able to save her 1% off her interest rate!

Raising money is all about marketing and sales (not real estate specific) so either hire marketing agency and read sales books, or hop on some LinkedIn courses on marketing and sales.Not sure the legal structure to use: talk to accountants and attorneys.Need deal flow: talk to brokers and go to a lot of networking events.Lending terms: start calling banks and loan brokers.From there, it is all risk mitigation. 

After living through the GFC and the shrinking market for local banks, they saw an opening in the market for what they call "consultative banking" like they had years before and decided to start a bank.

Just would like to start building relationships with people In the Phoenix area as well. 

Focus on absentee owners and start with the ones who live the farthest away and only own one property in the area since they have the least use for the property.You can also drive for dollars, looking for anomalies of disrepair and then look them up in the tax records and use a site like Spokeo to do cheap skip tracing.

How do I even start the conversation as a tenant?

I'm seeing rates start around 6.75% with your specific scenario. 

8 in 24 months is no joke, especially chipping away one at a time, I'm sure it has come with plenty of teachable moments, but its awesome that you are able to ask the question of how to scale.To start, a hard money lender that is only allowing you to do one at a time with your track record is... well... kind of silly.

When I first started out, I was insuring everything with USAA.