We do some private lending and we do not trust the borrower.

You might study up on this Atlanta business that is growing their business with private offerings (funding)   padsplit.comThey have a shades of gray solutoin for the unrelated adults, and rooming house zoning that is sort of working in the Atlanta area.   

Are you sticking to traditional banks, exploring private lenders, partnerships, or maybe something creative like seller financing?

A lot of private lenders will use their white label program to appear as a direct lender, however it is just another loan broker.

First, don't use REI Reply, it's just a white-labelled/private-agency version of GoHighLevel (the actual provider of the CRM) that they just mark up and charge you extra for everything you do (every text, email, etc is 2-10x more expensive than just linking twilio/mailgun to your GHL account, etc).With that out of the way, you can get to making workflows.

Our best use for the property would be to build a couple of large estate home (8k sq' and up) and form a private estate, but, being that we are in the County with no existing zoning requirements, we could also build what we want and potentially turn it into an income generating property.

But you’d have to target the <5% that are privately managed by newbies.

Also start networking to start buildign your team of find contractors, handymen, private lenders, real estate attorneys, title companies, architects,wholesalers.... 

I used a combination of leveraging my business line of credit, HELOC and partnerships for my first couple deals before adding in private lenders. 

Wholesaling, investing in REITs, private lending, and micro-investing platforms can diversify properties.