The appraiser will ask for permits for the work done, and if there is non to be provided he/she will not give the value and in turn you will not be able to get the full amount of money out of the home you were hoping to get.  

To respond to some of your other points. 1.

Hi Steve,Welcome to BP.There are several Meetups for Real Estate investors in Albuquerque.I suggest you go to Meetup.com and search.

You will be able to learn a lot from the forums and past posts.

If you need an example, go to my profile page.With that knowledge, I can then give you better direction as to where, what and how to invest with real estate.  

Its a tiny loan for any institution.You'll have to get hard bids from a local GC, but maybe $110/ft?

The information contained in this post is not to be relied upon.

What are the steps to getting this accomplished?

My goal is to continue to acquire more cash flowing rentals to eventually leave my day job and just self manage the rental properties. 

Hey @Chi Lo - I actually have a video on my YouTube page about this (lookup ClosedByMo on YouTube).Regarding walls being damp and waterproofed, it means there needs to be waterproofing on the basement retainer walls (this is something you can do post-construction and the contractors would need to dig around the house exposing the basement/foundation to apply the waterproofing).