I’ve been into real estate and have been in the learning phase for a while but i’ve been taking more action recently in looking for deals and getting deep into networking.

As I’m sure you now know, you should have released the money in draws After you had phases of the rehab inspected, so you knew your money was being used to improve the asset you had as collateral.

Currently in the value add and rent raising phase of the projectLessons learned?

We are currently working on a multi phase project that eventually yield about 90 home sites.    

If you're in the expansion phase of your portfolio, then you may want to continue to leverage.

If the rehab was 40K and divided into 4 stages of 10K each, then you'd front the first 10K of the rehab, the lender would inspect and if satisfied, would reimburse you with a 10K draw, which you'd then use to do the next 10K phase of the project, rinse and repeat until the project is complete.Like I said, it's possible to find inexperienced lenders who will loan you based on the purchase price + rehab project cost or (worse) the ARV, but that's naive/risky to the lender as s/he has no assurance the funds will actually be used on the rehab.I hope that makes sense and helps with your analysis!

Paying back the lender should be part of your business plan for the rental phase of the unit. 

Been in the real estate learning phase for over a year.

That being said, we’re stuck in the analysis paralysis phase.

First off, the entire deal you outlined, never was legal from the start, so this whole thing began horribly and missing due diligence phase from start.