I also enjoy woodworking but have not had much shop time lightly as I grow my businesses.

Definitely shop around.

Recently I applied for pre-approval in order to start looking for small multi-family units to do an owner occupied house hack, I was, unfortunately, denied pre-approval due to my low income.So I had an idea and I was wondering if this is 1) Legal/Feasible 2) Effective/Smart or Not.

I invest in Fargo, ND (the ND keyword alert brought me here), and there is a shop in town that has an investor loan that is 30-year fixed at around 4% and in house.  

@Cassandra Alessio Smart!

You may have to shop around for loan originators that will do rehab-related loans.

So, I made the mistake of listening to my mother to said, "don't buy anything you have to clothe and feed" and I sold my 6 homes and invested $1 million into a syndicated real estate deal for 2 K-Mart shopping centers and lost every exactly $1 million plus another $50,000 for attorney fees.I started earning 20 times as much money when I stopped taking advice from real estate brokers.

In a market that's quickly becoming saturated differentiation is key.As Phil Knight said in Shoe Dog: "When you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is - you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama.

I’m thinking it was a smart choice so I can get to closing and repairs soon.I’m wanting opinions as if I should have went straight to getting a mortgage or not vs hard money.

You may want to shop the policy both for RC and for ACV and find out if there is a policy with RC that will be affordable.