A little sweat equity in managing the property before hand allowed me to lower risk, understand the building better than a dozen inspections could have, and allowed me to hit the ground running at closing with a fully occupied building, great relationships with he tenants, and systems in place to cash flow day one.

By being willing to put in the sweat equity.

Anyone can do REI, just has to be at the right collateral, sweat equity and risk level.Can you provide the following info, so this discussion can be more useful. 

Also, critically right now, they aren't a "refi sweat shop" or a "tech company disrupter" that got overly large during the 2020/2021 refi boom.

I have been working through major renovations such as a new roof, a fully gutted bathroom with higher end finishes, and lots of new amenities that my competition does not have.I hope the additional sweat equity and improvements will increase the property value; however, since doing all of the comps in November AirDNA and Rabbu look much different and much lower for comps.

Don't sweat it.I'd spend the next 6 months reading posts here on the forums, listening to the biggerpockets podcasts, reading the biggerpockets blogs, and reading a couple of books.While you're add it you should increase your income, decrease your expenses, and start working on fixing your credit score.After 6 months you'll have a good foundation of education and you will start to understand if you still want to get into real estate.

If you pictures of their shoddy work that would also be your smoking gunDon’t sweat it.

They hate to do it, so if you can spend some leg work and sweat equity selling estimates and jobs, you'll learn a ton. 

The property is seasoned over 90 days and still the lender wants everything short of a colonoscopy, improvement lists, receipts, time spent (sweat equity).

It takes work and patience (and most likely sweat equity) to find the cash flowing deals but it's still a great buy and hold market.