We have about $40k equity right now.I'm open to using hard money for anything left over not covered by private and HELOC.So I'm interested in the best way to structure a deal with these players, but most interested in how I can make it a fair and attractive deal with my private investor.

If your goal is to go beyond that, you may as well start lining up the right players now.

What I am hoping to do is simply one step further from investing my own money versus using my families and friends's, so definitely want to stay away from the bank/sec route- with all that cost and regulation it's just not worth the effort for us small players.

Who are the big players in the market who have $100M up to multi-billion $ apartment portfolios?

I have done dozens of projects in Lehigh Valley  - took me a while to hammer out the right set up and all the right players.

Pick a good town :)In college and NBA basketball they used to use a term called “tweener” to describe some players, too big for guard too small for power forward, that kind of thing.

It has been years since only the intuitional players have been the only ones in the sandbox.

I spend a lot of time getting to know and maintaining relationships with all the area players.

Those cash buyers do NOT buy via real estate agents, because real estate brokers don't have the distressed properties for sale in the MLS, because these properties are being found, "brokered", purchased, and rehabbed completely outside of the world the RE agents/brokers live in.And perhaps my biggest point is this:  The big players that are licensing our WeBuyHouses.com brand are almost all broker/agents AND investors, and those guys wholesale deals to cash buyers.  

I sell to just a few power players in my market.