In general, you will be expected to bring money to the table.You could get lucky and find someone to loan 100% on the purchase and perhaps someone who will loan 100% of the rehab with a second.

After bringing in multiple contractors I've made the decision to tear down the houses.

I would agree with Jenkins Ramon above, that even if you don't like your current job, find some way to use your degree to bring in regular income while you start to invest.

All the things you bring up help what I was getting to which is knowing I would need some skin in the game and having to re-fi with a conventional loan.

Find someone that can bring something to the table of course. i.e.

Bill Exeter, that's interesting, I will bring this up with my CPA.

And that's all laminate will bring in return.Laminate is cheap and anyone expecting their money to go towards a quality property will (or should) expect quality in return.

On top of the repair cost needing to bring the property up to code alone is going to impact the current market value immensely.

So I am assuming I should spend some money on marketing to find the deals to bring to these buyers then?

Usually it's setup they get 50% for listing and marketing Then person bringing tenant gets 50%.