Going with a hard money loan allows you to know the money is there for you to complete your project and you will not run out of money halfway through.

Are there any good resource recommendations for learning accounting for a project like that?

But my other mentee is having a really, really ,REALLY tough time, and I want to help him out.Here’s some background : He’s been trying to get into real estate for 6 1/2 years.

I know this is a tough and confusing question, but hopefully someone can answer it for me.

The reason people seek for distress properties, so that they can acquire the property at a low price and renovate the house aka "value add" so that they can increase the property's value and create sweat equity, then pulling the money out or cash out we call out so that investors can liquidate their money and reinvest on the next project @Albert Bui @Carlos Valencia

step 1 is buying a distressed property at a great price, which is really tough to do right now, and way harder than it was 5 or 10 years ago. 

I might add, I would also check the track record on completed projects (specifically the type of projects you are interested in funding).

A contractor isnt there to finance the customers project . 

The problem:  I'm on contractor #10 in Southern CA and so far nobody wants to quote the project!!

You'd need a JV partner and they would probably want to take control of that project.