I'm an engineer with a background in finance.Would be great to meet a mentor that could lead me in the right direction so I can get started on the right foot.My goal is buy and hold for rental income--build a portfolio.

But, designing, building, and implementing a system robust enough to handle my business would have cost me far more time (and money) than buying Quickbooks and hiring someone to set it up for me.I started with Excel, and ultimately I waited too long to make the switch to Quickbooks... then waited too long to get real professional help.

Find a structural engineer and a good foundation company...unfortunately, there's not enough information for anyone here to be able to tell you what to expect...

As a software engineer, I highly advise this tactic but you're more than welcome to try it but be aware of its consequencs.

Upon inspection, the house passed with flying colors, I had a structural and Mechanical engineer's letter deeming the home safe.

My real-world experience is in the realm of leadership and engineering. 

I graduated from UW with a degree in Engineering and an MHA from WSU.

I work full time in an office doing CADD / AutoCad drafting design work on Civil Engineering projects for the past 15 years.  

Essentially you need to reverse engineer this thing, and you need more inputs in order to figure out how to do it. 

Wordpress websites can range from poor to decent based on the quality of the template but the problem is twofold: Wordpress needs to be updated constantly to address bugs and security fixes (which is a pain to do), and Wordpress is primarily a blog engine and doesn't look great for bonafide websites.From my critical eye, I can tell when a website is made on Wix or Wordpress and not in a good way.