My best contractors over thirty years of flipping were always people I met through networking or other investors or trial and error, never online.

Value your money more. 

If it is a private money/ commercial style  lender, it is a relatively simple process.

Private (hard) money might help with renovation but will be pricey.

Atlanta MSA is great and growing, but Multi-Family supply coming on line there both now and through next year is significant, wouldn't this be a better/cheaper deal 1 year from now?

The real work is locating these properties and I've learned the best way to do this is to work in towns/areas that have online GIS systems that map; topography, wetlands, soils, etc. and assessors data available for download either from local sources or listsource.com.  

The site is no longer online.

You don't want to get a call 3 months into a project where you have lent money and hear the operator say that they ran out of money and need more money from you to finish the project or you will lose your investment.

Once your emergency account has a reasonable amount in it, whatever that means to you, you might want to think about steering that payroll money into the investment savings account from each pay check and leave the emergency account money as is.

Going direct instead of having a GC do the work will save you money too since that GC will put a percentage on top of work.