Maintain a credit score of 620 or higher, save for a down payment, and research markets carefully.

You're the fish.They often use a mix of fear, threat and urgency to push a target to act.It can be as simple as a 24 hours sale from your favorite shop that requires you to log in to your account first or your boss asking you to wire money right now or he/she/they will lose an important contract that will cost millions.So cybersecurity is important because without that, you might have an incident that can cost a lot of money, impact your reputation and might affect your credit score.

Credit 700+, bank statements available, good liquidity position (almost enough in cash to purchase the property - but obviously know that's idiotic).  

As lenders, well issue a prequal/preapproval letter if we've analyzed your income, assets (bank and brokerage statements to establish that you have the liquidity to afford the down payment, closing costs, and reserves), review credit of the guarantors, review the relevant experience to ensure that we're not throwing our money away on newbies that are wandering around in the dark, and have put together a reasonable plan of attack for the project.

If the house is listed as-is, there won’t be much room for negotiation (ie. seller concessions/credits), but you can offer a price that factors in the rehab components.

A tax account ensures nothing is accidentally spent elsewhere, and a marketing account makes sure lead generation is always prioritized.From a credit perspective, connecting credit cards to these accounts on autopay helps you manage spending responsibly while playing the credit game.

If they do not qualify because of poor credit or income issues compared to being self employed etc there are differences - but typically people don’t qualify due to poor credit and people will seller finance to these borrowers thinking they woke up at a holiday inn and got a finance degree when in reality they repeat their past mistakesRemember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result

For a traditional Heloc at most small banks/CU's, the rate will be variable and will be WSJ Prime + a spread that represents the borrower's credit risk.

Cash flowing well on every SFH and small multi family deal I've done in Upstate NY, even with my first having an interest rate above 10% due to what my credit was.

From there, it's normal DTI/Credit/Cash assessment for the new loan to determine whether you can afford the loan.