I would love to meet any real players in the area who would love to pay it forward and help someone green like myself.

This is a the perfect vehicle to use for short term like buying a  property with cash, then refinancing the property to pay the line of credit back in full, and use it again.   

To pay for this, I used a heloc on my current home.

I do not have 5 layers of management that make my rates higher, no lender I work with pays for my office space, licensing, benefits, marketing department, compliance department.... 

The cost effective way starting is partner with an established wholesaler and they provide people to reach out to or pay for lists and do cold calling/door knocking yourself. 

paying mgt any landscape/snow/utilities?

To be clear, you are not paying off the 80K mortgage.

That is not uncommon, BUT asking the seller to do that likely means paying a bit more for the property.

Not really worth paying their points if they are just doing what you are already doing. 

I'm not sure why not - one of the great parts about real estate investing is that you can build a team around you for aspects you aren't as strong at or simply want to delegate to someone/expert and do the others yourself - look up "Core 4" for example - where you can have an agent, lender, manager, contractor all at once for your investments and can theoretically just let them do all the interactive work