The judgment will most likely be worth as much as the paper its printed on and all you will have to show for it is a legal bill you will be paying your attorney.

If you don't have such a person, you can go to a third party service like VerifyInvestor.com and pay a fee for them to review your financials and generate the letter (from an attorney).

Did the Lemus pay just a security deposit upfront or did they pay some portion of rent in addition to the security deposit?

. $425k) to purchase a 12-unit Apartment ($1.5M) with 25% down ($375k from the HELOC).The remaining $50k from the HELOC could go into fixing/rehab of the 12-units.Then cash-refinance the larger amount from the 12-units to pay off the HELOC in one lump-sum (as much as possible), then using the cash flow from the apartment to pay off the rest of the HELOC.Repeat the process with a new apartment.1) Does this make sense?

In my shoes I would want the stability of the cash flow and look to leverage as a long term rental through a PM.Some folks want to cash out and reinvest the new found equity in a higher producing asset. 

They stop paying anything from that point no rent and no bills.

The travelers who are willing to do rent-by-room also pay on the lower end of the spectrum so it may be hard to get your property to cash flow. 

Collect an IRS Form W-9: Before paying a contractor, collect a completed W-9 form from them.

There was a time when to be competitive in this market your best option would have been to pay cash, but with current market conditions I do not think that is necessary. 

If you go to 80% do expect to pay a pretty signficant "penalty" for the higher levereage - think 1 point higher in rates.