LOC's can have negative effects on your future purchasing power if not set up correctly and keeping in mind you can "never" use an LOC as a reserve or asset.It will always be a debt burden and can over inflate your back end debt ratios depending on the W2 income and your liabilities.

I suppose we could be lead to believe that relative to the $16k, your profit was enough to justify said fee.

@Tanner Lewis, is right, if you want to consolidate all of that debt into one loan then place all the debt so it is secured by the property, sell the property and 1031 into another property with one loan.

I find I either get poor quality leads or outright scams.

Yes does anyone have any PML leads?

I always pay off my highest interest rate items first, especially if its debt.

Maybe get your debt paid down, get your first deal, get some savings built up, then reconsider the potential change. 

Doing a conventional loan for each property is out of the question due to my debt-to-income ratio. 

I am kind of stuck on where I should lead him next, since he's busy with school and sports he doesn't have time for a job.

Which leads to other posters to offer no sympathy for those investors and then the name calling started.