@Ryan Blake A very common DIY mistake I see in LLCs is someone thinking they formed a series LLC and they didn't.

This assignment after the final judgment is common where the underlying owner of the note is a trust.....it’s just paper work juggling on their side.Just remember, you’ll have 2018 taxes that you inherit (if not more), hoa debts, etc.

I’m just getting things started and want to get into ‘buy and hold’ properties to bring in some additional cash flow.My wife and I have a decent amount of funds set aside, but I was wondering if it makes sense to open a HELOC on our primary residence and utilize some of those funds as well for a down payment.

It was stressful, there was a possibility I wasn't going to get the loan, and I had to be flexible (had to do 20% down instead of 5% in order to get the loan and I had to escrow money to do repairs after closing.With any distressed property, especially a property without utilities on I would try and buy cash or private money from now on if possible.  

This usually keeps it to where your tenant is only technically renting their room and has common area access to the rest of the house.

If you think it might take awhile, I'd just get that HELOC paid off and utilize it when you're ready.

I previously spoke with the assessor who said they would utilize the sales approach in conjunction with a program called Marshall & Swift (cost approach) for commercial valuation.

Now if you found something just extraordinarily out of order like all the plumbing in the house was actually faulty, or there was foundation damage, or something else that the average person would not be able to identify, then that's a perfectly good reason to utilize that clause or better yet, to try to renegotiate a price with the new information in hand.

Who pays utilities? 

I don't worry about trying to appease them because they'll never qualify as a client/tenant of mine anyhow, and anyone who would be my tenant can likely see past that nonsense.Personally, my only absolutes are NO evictions ever and no recent utility collections.