As other's have stated it's best to start with a simple cosmetic rehab for your first flip and work your way to larger rehab budgets.As far as lending options, a fix and flip (hard money loan) is your best bet.

Make it simple.   4 investors with 25% ownership.  

For a small portfolio I think it would-be pretty simple to create a system with Excel, QuickBooks, Dropbox or other cloud service, Google calendar or similar, and some type of contact management software to handle maintenance requests. 

Now my bookkeeper has rules in place through Quickbooks that makes it fairly simple for her to handle my growing portfolio.

My company has an in-house HELOC product that is very simple to get funds and allows investment property HELOCs (as long as you don't have 15+ financed properties).

Their website has a tenant friendly page where they can post maintenance requests...quite simple

The initial rental purchase was a simple DSCR loan.

AI frees up time from the simple tasks and allows us to focus on creating value.

It’s a simple line item in their insurance paperwork, and it means you’ll automatically get notified if the policy is canceled or modified.

I was talking with someone the other day who wanted to invest in a deal with rookie sponsors).The simple fact is, I think most people are good people.