This is going to be a cheap plug, so apologizing up front, but have you ever thought of associating with a national company that can shorten the learning curve, provide motivated seller leads, a system to simplify the investing business, and funding to flip properties(if needed)?

Some will do the appeal for cheap or take a percentage of the cost reduction.

this guys cheap!".  

I was initially only thinking of using the $40k to put 20% down on a house worth up to $200k, but it seams that a lot of people here buy multiple cheap houses with very little down and that's sounding more appealing to me.Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

If it's commercial I would say go with a white box reconstruction, that way it is an attraction to new tenants who would like to do a buildout, while still being relatively cheap (pretty much demolition, electrical, drywall, drop ceiling, ect.)If it's residential, I would start calling contractors right away to get some estimates of what you need done and try to avoid bringing up the fact that you will be receiving insurance money because then their prices just skyrocket.Let me know how things go!

Your getting cheap money and putting very little cash into the deal while house hacking so I would go for it.  

As long as you are not using the line, you don't pay anything on it and when you do use it the payments are interest only so its cheap money.  

I want to acquire some land (with a damaged house) cheap and the owner wants to sell it cheap.  

That is simply and cheap if you do it yourself.

I think this area will be flat for several years, but still be a good area to get a lot of sq ft cheap and be in a safe area for homeowners.