Typically, not doable.

I am wanting to know if I could make the sides out of wood and cover them with hardie backed board (concrete board typically used to attach tile on) to protect wood frame from getting to hot and catching fire.

look for "delayed financing" programs , less seasoning than typical cash refi.

Sometimes the HOA fees (essential the same as our Body Corporate fees for units here in Oz) can be very high and out weigh any cashflow benefit of the rent.Getting funding can certainly be harder but not impossible. 

House hack typically means you live in one portion of the property and rent out the rest.

This creates a bit of a conundrum to me as I really wasn’t planning to buy something this early, essentially moving my one year of waiting into potentially 4-8 weeks.So, the knowledge base I have so far comes in the form of around 30 BP podcasts, Brandon’s two books on rental property investing (read ~3 times), as well as the newly released investing guide by Josh and Brandon.

@Brian Horwitz  That's a great strategy to use the equity in your rental portfolio to essentially double the amount of properties you own.   

A typical flip takes about 400-600 man hours.

I was offered a lease option on one my properties recently and for essentially all the reasons you just mentioned, I declined.

We typically will have them prescreened with @Paul Ritter and MyCreditTeam.com prior to accepting them.