What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

@Anthony Bodota welcome to BP in the OC. 

When considering creative financing, it’s crucial to fully understand the terms and risks of partnerships, seller financing, or using HELOCs to avoid overleveraging.

You have to learn what you are willing to accept as not perfect, but good enough. 

I end up spending 20k more than I expected.

But ya have to make some educated prognostications in life.Add this to the information your processing - What your talking about doing is eliminating around $4000 or interest expense (which is deductible anyway so really could be a real impact of eliminating $2800 or so) of debt in exchange for paying over $10K in capital gains tax (don't forget possible state gains tax as well).  

I got red tagged for using an handyman and not a licensed repairman when I started doing some renovations in Florida, and learned that each municipality has its own rules of engagement, ordinances, building inspector and so forth.

Columbus has been coming up a lot and would love to learn more.

Google is your friend on this one.

I have a lot to learn, but willing to put in the work.