Trying to break into Philly

[Kenneth Elrick]

My name is Kenneth, like I said I'm in Philly trying to capitalize on what could potentially be the deal of a lifetime. First I'll start with a little background. My real estate background is zero but for the past 6 years I've been busting my *** cleaning up my credit report. I've gone from the 630's to the 770's in the past 4 years with all 3 agencies and paid off my student loans 3 years early and I was planning to buy a house this summer.
Here's the deal of a lifetime. I was talking with a buddy about being in the market for a house and he tells me I GOTTA buy his property. Well, I was looking for something in the 50-60k range but he takes me to see his property which was WAY out of my price range. Well it's a building zoned C2 with 5 units, the first floor unit which can easily be a storefront.
This is a sweetheart of a deal, it's easily worth 180-200k, has 1 existing tenant and needs only minor work to get 2 of the remaining 4 units ready to rent while leaving me the 2 units on the 3rd floor to live in and fix up. The problem here is I need 20k down and he's willing to hold the mortgage on the remaining 125k mortgage. Too good to be true? Yeah, I only have 8K saved up. I'm shopping around for loans and banks rear their ugly head. They're only willing to loan you money if you DON'T need the money, if you DO actually need the money get ready to grab your ankles. The best I've found so far is 15K 4yr term @9.99%. The seller is working to help find me something reasonable that I won't need a half gallon of lube to pay off, but it's starting to look like that may be my only option.
Well that's basically it in a nutshell, I have been browsing here this past week and today I joined because I need advice.