@Andrew Kerr has brought up a very common missconception: "commercial" loans do not inherently have balloon payments. 

In a private lender world(I mean less formal, less of a business type approach more of a guy/gal with lots of cash) If you could land a deal to get the $55,000 to buy and rehab, what would be a reasonable return/terms for the private lender to do this deal?

My rehab clients source from wholesalers or their network - after you get a reputation for flipping a couple, deals will get brought to you all the time. 

The biggest downside for me is not having MLS access to gain a faster understanding of the market (fully examining sales in neighborhoods, quickly comping properties when they become available, etc).Based on both approaches, I'm biased toward having the license but also knowing when it's best to utilize an agent to achieve your goals.

However, this has historically never worked out well.My husband and I used to be bleeding hearts for some of these types of "helpers", but after we discovered 1 living in one of our projects (explained why he was taking so long to finish), and 1 who hired his wife and her friend to be his grunts (not the best idea for manual labor), and 1 who brought his dogs (yes plural) to our flip project where everything was sparkly new...and then wasn't because dog slabber was the new finish....we decided that we needed to save our bleeding hearts for passion projects that didn't involve our RE business.  

I think we are kind of saying the same thing which is that there is a huge variance in values under the umbrella of those city titles and that you should be careful which comps your using when approaching a flip opportunity in that area.As Trevor stated, the subject property is North of the Freeway... and therefore probably should stick to the reseda comparables to not get an unrealistic ARV...Now off to get that SFV 818 forehead tattoo so I can reclaim my valley boy status 

I've took zero classes, but been approached by new investors that have spent thousands on stuff like fortune builders and so on needing desperate help.

Second, what do should I do before approaching the homeowner to ensure I can legally acquire the property. 

You have target  to pay off early to create more equity so right approach will be lower interest rate.

.), I need to sell the property (approaches 10% to sell a property), and I take on all the risk of unexpected events.