We won’t qualify to get another mortgage anyway due to either dti or income.From your investor expertise, what would you do in this situation?

Any expertise/advice from anyone would be great! 

That where your agents boots on the ground expertise comes in to land you actual deals.

Just go through them, select the renovated/closely matching ones, and enter them into a model.Here's my fix & flip model, you can see the comps entered and some quick stats below them: Then I use that comp data to adjust the Sale Price in the model to what I estimate it will be (double check the resale $/sf is in-line with the comps), then adjust the purchase price until I hit my desired return level. 

The "cash-for-equity" program from QuickLoans appears to be a shared-equity or deferred repayment model, where you receive upfront cash in exchange for giving up a portion of your future equity.

However, what I would suggest based on your expertise as a contractor is going into a semi-fixer upper and make minor repairs to boost equity as well as savings. 

Thank you all for your advice and expertise.

This is an opportunity to confirm they have the expertise you need.

OK I do have a little expertise in CA on these issues..

And things could still get rockier, but hopefully your expertise and seasoned investments mean your overall risk profile is very low.