Given that she has already said that, I will go a slightly different direction:What did you do on your last deal that could be substantially improved? 

You can Join your local REIA, Network, Joint Venture with others, If you know family & friends willing to use some of their IRA/401K.You've mentioned "reading" peoples post have you listened to the Podcasts here..they cover everything about REI and they last about 1 hour give or take a few minutes.For your personal life I would urge you to pursue improving your credit.

Once you are more comfortable flipping and have a good team in place (i.e. contractors, realtors, lawyers, etc.) and your speed and predictability improves, then I would start using leverage to scale up your business.

Do you plan on making significant improvements to the structure/units?  

They either didn't have a design person on staff, or they wanted to design it for me and do all the work (can't use my own contractors).I'm trying to find someone I can pay to come and tell me what to do to a home to bring it up to date.  

. , I had a similar issue on a 100 years old house too.in my case i resolved by improving a badly designed/implemented gutter system (all the rain water was just dumping over the walls, soaking into them then getting into the basement) and diverting that water away from the house. 2xprimer + 2x good paint.maybe this is the case here.if you don't want the hassle of getting rid of the existing tenants, vacancy and finding other (hopefully) better suited tenants, maybe first you can just paint the place inside and outside and resolve any safety issues (rails). what did you repair to the place?

A letter can be sent if it helps.My profile has a few of my credentials I believe, if it is not enough, an improvement is needed.

CL was developed for local use and users/staff take that seriously.

@Kimberley ThompsonMany of the BP tools, though improving, are quite U.S.A.

The property needed some improvements, but nothing so serious.