I would suggest building a strong team around you for the first few investments while you get some skin in the game.

If you've owned the property for less than one year, most banks will not allow you to pull out any equity, just reimburse your expenses in the new loan amount, but keep skin in the game from your initial deposit.  

You'll need a bank that's willing to lend you this amount with you having "no skin in the game," but since you'll be acquiring a commercial loan and not a residential loan, seeing as that's how financial institutions classify investment mortgages, you shouldn't have any problem finding one who will (you'll just have to search).

You might try driving around your area and see if you can find any ongoing projects similar in nature as to what you have in mind and attempt to have talks with the contractors on site or even the owners if they are available. 

They can literally see us walk in/out of the bathroom unless we have the curtains drawn, but then there's no natural light in the living room.We would like to build an 8-ft tall cinder block wall (similar to our one with the other neighbor) between us and the apartments.

I bought a distressed property, so naturally protested the value as soon as the house was mine. 

If you are going to have skin in the game then I would definitely say buy it , fix it, and retail it yourself.

We originally wanted to only use her RE lic. for our flip properties but...she is a natural and already has 3 sales in her first month.

It's a steam boiler fired by natural gas.

I think it's just the natural thing that happens in an investors brain at a certain point of their house hunting.