Be careful when you say 'skin in the game' regarding a syndication.

Check out this link: Burn Exposure Chart (antiscald.com)As you can see, having skin under 140 degree water can (and will) cause 3rd degree burns in around 5 seconds. 

What would be the incentive for anyone to fund you, if you don't have any skin in the game, if I understand it correctly, and an investor will not even get the first lien.

Make sure you each have some skin in the game (your plan sounds great with him spending $250k on materials and you financing house) so that way it is in everyones best interest to show up and get to the finish line.

Nonetheless a house hack will be a great education for your first rental, it will allow you to get some skin in the game at a lower initial cost, and can be a property you move on from in a year or two and repeat with your next home.

Lots of ways to skin the proverbial cat in this industry!

Since these people have no skin in the game, what might be a good strategy for approaching them to see if they can relax some of the restrictions/prices so I can rehab these properties and get them back on the tax roll?

On FB I have never found any good groups, mostly people just complaining about guests who get under their skin, nothing productive.

If they pay, they are serious.Investors are always talking about having skin in the game.

So a sponsor that's great for one investor will probably be terrible for another (and vice versa).I'm a conservative investor, so when I invest in multi-family I prefer sponsors that have at least one full real-estate cycle of experience, little to no money lost, low leverage, and high skin in the game.And there is an apartment operator that has multiple real estate cycles of experience (decades) with no money lost, low 65% less LTV, and high 10%+ skin in the game.They market under 506B so are prohibited from posting publicly on the Internet and instead function by referrals.