At the refinance, I am able to get a loan for $180,000 and $20,000 of the money partner's money stays in the deal.

These names frequently come up in investor circles because of their reliability.Speak Directly to Their Team: Legitimate lenders will have knowledgeable representatives willing to explain their loan products and processes in detail.

Im trained enough myself at this point in QBO, but my bookeeper still does the more complex entries (Loans, capital balances, reconciliation, etc) I just do the data entries for expenses. 

At the current scenario, without knowing anything about you or your properties I will recommend either to look at a loan from your assets using DSCR loan.

The current lender refuses to do a loan assumption. 

For active investments I advocate considering how you can diversify WITHOUT ceding your competitive advantage nor the superior profitability of the niche your in.As an example my business is running an investment fund and syndication high interest commercial mortgage loans secured by income producing real estate. 

The two existing LTR units (on my family’s property) were built 5–8 years ago at a cost of about $80,000 per unit, so I’m estimating a 20% increase in costs for the new builds.My plan is to use the equity in the land as the down payment for the construction loan, which I expect will make closing costs the primary upfront expense.

Other than paying for an appraisal or BPO (and maybe a credit report), you should not pay a lender anything until your loan funds.

But bottom line every place is different and there is no one size fits all for the development game.In Oregon and WA many banks will go 50% loan to cost not to exceed 50 or 60% LTV on dirt.. but for me I always pay cash for the dirt.

So we retired the sellers loan within 12 to 18 months.