Additionally, have a clear budget, factoring in potential repair costs, and ensure you understand the rules about earnest money deposits and closing deadlines.LLC for Real Estate Investing: Forming an LLC for rental properties can offer liability protection and may provide tax advantages, though the tax benefits are non-existence for rentals.

The hard money 10% plus additional thousands in closing costs was too much to swallow. 

Regarding the HELOC question, consider the interest rate on the debt.

After closing, work on increasing your income, reducing debt, and preparing for a second mortgage.

So by spending $42k I collected an additional $75k over 5 years, and then sold the furniture through a consignment store collecting $8k as my share.  

I should add it will be a short term rental property. 

From a tax standpoint, there are additional disclosures to make when selling a business asset for less than fair market value to a related third party. 

In addition, we pull our own comps and use Lightning Docs to generate our loan documents.

I also want the seller to sign, just to add its own confirmation to the tenant's statements.

It may be too late.yup stop payment.. also for future reference if you cant pay cash for these kind of educational events don't do it.how are you going to do business if you have to charge this to even get started.. this is the very thing that really bugs me about the real estate education sector in the US>. talking people to go into credit card debt when they know full well only 10% or less of folks that try this or any kind of wholesaling / flipping/ notes / lending etc will do anything .. and especially if you have no capital.