I'm starting to investigate more creative financing options to scale faster in 2025 - 2030.

Use some for buy and hold (I personally would prefer apartments rather than buying a few single family homes) and some for lending/trust deed investing.In either category, you must know what you are doing, know how to vet the investment, how to vet the sponsor (if investing in a larger fund of some sort), the laws and regulations on the lending side, how to investigate which areas to invest in buy and hold and notes/trust deeds for that matter.So as you have already said several times, lots to think about . . . 

We also plan to finish the basement, which would add about 700 square feet of living space.Before purchasing the property, we ran preliminary numbers, and converting it to an STR seemed promising.

Based on some quick preliminary research, it seems like it could be a pretty good place for me to start investing.

I was told if I could show a professional license such as a broker license I might get approved but the best option would be a Private Investigators license, otherwise, they didn't see any other path to approval for me or my company.

Are they going to flag it as a statistical abnormality and send investigators after you?

I also did some investigating online and see the renter has a tendency not to hold down a job.I offered asking price (fair market) because it was the sellers bottom line and the fact there were already tenants renting.

I haven't investigated this option yet.

Preliminary planning and design work are underway, with the project expected to bring significant value to the portfolio and contribute to the revitalization of the community.

I am no expert but it might be worth investigating something that has not happened in 400 years to the financial markets.