@James Yancy II Upfront fees will almost always be applied to your closing if you choose to go with that company.

I found a off-market deal about 2 months ago, and I was about to close the deal, but apparently the owner has some tax problems.They owe 6k at the county and from what he said " there was an issue where their payments were not being properly applied to their account for several months and they can't even make anymore payments until the company tracks down the payments they already made".

@Cassi Justiz does this apply to duplexes as well?

A very common business model for HML is to promise the world, get everyone into escrow, get everyone to apply and pay for an appraisal......then cherry pick only the very best and safest loans to fund, and find a BS reason to deny all the others.

give them the option to apply to the property at market rate and with security deposit if they want a longer lease.

The rule of "fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me" applies here.

However if I am able to apply what I have learned so far, learn more as I go through the process and hopefully establish some relationship with a hard money lender, monetary value will be irrelevant.

I’m now applying a lot of what I learned to buy multifamily closer to where I live.

This house is plaster as opposed to drywall used in modern construction.The carpenter would nail the slats to the studs and then apply plaster.    

Go apply and get a 0% credit card for 18 months.