That could mean working with an investor willing to fund the deal for a share of the profits or starting smaller with a house hack or live-in flip to build credibility, or putting sweat equity into a deal with a partner to learn and build your track record.

More like one person on the HOA is opposed.  

Easy to use yourself too HELOC works (there may be some places that do a HELOCs on rental properties)I personally have used a 401k Loan on a few occasions - You're essentially borrowing money from your 401k and paying yourself back (interest goes back into your 401k as opposed to a bank) and if you don't pay your 401k back the loan would simply become a withdraw (maybe some tax penalties, but you could probably finagle a workaround).

We plan on living in the house and doing most of the fixes and renovations ourselves.

They had previously been combined into one house.

Typically someone who was communicative turns distant, unresponsive, blows you off when you're trying to talk to them in person, and the tall tale sign of boxes in the hallway.

As there are Californians still moving here, the vast majority are instead picking the states with low or no state income tax like Texas, Florida, or Tennessee.Although we still have a positive influx of people moving here, more people have been leaving due to rising housing costs in recent years.To put it in perspective, we saw around +45k in the 2010's.Overall, CO is basically a balanced net migration in recent years which is likely to keep home prices steady....

Theres a lot of content on here about house hacking.

For my personal portfolio I use a modified spreadsheet amortization by VERTEX, available in Google Docs.  

I had a similar strategy with my first few house hacks: buy in great A & B Chicago neighborhoods....get by with minimum cash flow, and wait...What's your plan for the next purchase Michael?