Currently my GF (also a veteran and we are not legally married yet) has our rental property and current residence under VA loans.

It is currently occupied and the residents seem okay with the work being done.  

what I did with some on my hard woods on a few of my properties I traded logs for finished flooring and had some really cool custom oak flooring made for my personal residence. 

We used Home Legends engineered hardwood from home Depot on our personal residence.

Or if you want to get rehab loans through a bank, your options would be a 203k loan (if you intend owner occupy the property) or a HomeStyle Rehab loan if you do not plan on it being your primary residence. 

Closed on 7/20/2018- Repeat On our way to buying an undervalued 7 unit (waiting for amended contracted to be signed by seller as of Friday) All of this was funded by a HELOC on my primary residence.

Area median income is $53k, so with your average rent of $714/m ($8,568/yr) that's only 16% income/rent which would indicate there is some room for people to pay more - but only if the comps are either already at or very near that price point, or your units are far superior while not pricing residents out. 

Listening to people on BP talk about distressed or under performing properties, it sounds like the approach would be to cut expenses by passing utilities on to the residents.

This is because every town seems to keep their heads up high at the idea of allowing multi-fams in, but a large percentage of the single family mini mansions are actually housing multiple residents.

I would love to learn more about this process, such as do these homes need to be primary residences, vacation homes, strict rental properties.