They'd bought more house than they could afford anyway, but the refi messed up the whole thing.

I want the place to be vacant when shown and in its best condition possibleRight now I'm doing one where I've repainted the whole place and done new flooring....... cant put my ad up until its far enough along that I can take nice pictures....but it wont be 100% ready before I post my ad and it will still need some small stuff done after the open house.

So rather than spend a bunch of money and bring in a specialist inspector for all the different trades (electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roof, etc) you can bring in a generalist at a fraction of the cost to evaluate the whole house looking for a broad range of problems. 

You might be able to achieve that on a deep value add play... maybe.

I’m still new at the whole fix & flip and would love to learn more experience or hear advices from the veterans here.

That's a pretty decent price/square foot for Casa Grande, as long as it doesn't need a whole lot of work.

In the meantime, I would shut the water off to the whole building until you can get in and shut off just the apartment with the leak.

Then pro's like me can best help you achieve those goals within what you're working with 

In our case, it's handled exactly like the way we bought a new property, except this is half, and we get a new mortgages, pay the mortgage tax, the whole works.If it is a portfolio loan, the lender could possibly amend the mortgage after vetting the credit worthiness of the buyer, and take the father in law off.

In that unfortunately (but potential) situation, you end up having to bring in another contractor (who will get paid), and then still have an equity obligation to your friend.In my experience, partnering with a contractor who brings nothing to the table other than their contracting skills is a situation where the investor has a whole lot to lose and not a lot to gain.