To fund the project, I combined a HELOC on my personal home with a personal loan from my bank (PNC).

Pick up some cheap wireless routers from Goodwill for $5 and you’ll find most can already function at either end of that wireless bridge (either converting the existing municipal WiFi to Ethernet or rebroadcasting that Ethernet cable in a basic “bridge only” mode that gets you out having to do late night web search for “Double NAT” which is actually far more annoying than the physical bugs of the same name. 

Thankfully they don't care about tax returns either because without W2 income combined with tax write offs, expenses and buildings that are depreciated....I don't exactly look wealthy!

However, functionally, that's almost the same as dropping the price and getting rid of the $5k credit.

Combined with other factors this can lead to business lines of credit and business loans so you don't have to leverage your personal credit (I should note that banks don't like lending to real estate based entities due to their high risk nature).Not sure what state you're located in but the costs with forming and keeping an LLC can be costly.

It was assumed that the split structure was a function of being late in the market cycle, if that is the case do you think these deals will become less common and this practice will revert to kore traditional deals?

The house needs to be safe, functional and pleasant for the tenants.

Both are also paid off resulting in a net operating income of 29k annually combined.

We get many that want a combination of quiet remote location but driveable access to Asheville or surrounding activities. 

A first big one for me is the title items, for example in MN (only state I deal with trailers in) the trailer is titled through DMV unless someone did the work of getting it combined with property to become deeded as real estate (there is additional steps and conditions).