Its almost impossible to purchase a flip house through MLS because everyone is bidding the prices up.

My question is should I pursue looking for hard money lenders at almost 100% ( yes I know that is virtually impossible) or should I start looking for private money investors and if so how?

Usually cosmetics won't come into play unless you're talking about such severe vandalism or dilapidation that the property would be difficult/impossible to sell if the bank had to take possession. 

Somehow this happened when 4 houses in a row were all built by one family on their one lot, then it was subdivided, or maybe subdivided and then they built, makes no sense either way but now I understand that if I want to flip it I will have an impossible time selling to anyone who will use a bank loan because of this encroachment issue.  

Figure out a way to finance a property (sounds like a bad idea/impossibility if using a HELOC), take the monthly cash flow and save up until we have enough to invest again. 

I'm from the sf bay area and its impossible to find any cash flowing properties these days over here.

Don't bother to ask a residential loan officer about HELOC on a rental, they will tell you "impossible" and not even know of alternatives.Again: You can get an LOC on your rentals by asking a commercial lender about asset based LOC or portfolio LOC.

Unless you have 30 grand in your account it’s going to be virtually impossible to buy a property for 120k wether you use a bank a hml or the seller to finance the deal .

That can be damn near impossible too .

But doesn't mean its impossible.