It's usually beneficial to pay off some mortgage before paying off HELOC as the interest is greater on the front end of a mortgage than the interest charged on a HELOC...I'll do that until either the mortgage interest is lower than the HELOC interest OR the number of months to pay off the HELOC is equal to the end of the draw period.

You could offer $470k in this scenario and offer to pay legal fees for an attorney to draw up the contract and he will be netting out the same.Once you have him interested in giving you some time without engaging a realtor, then you start digging into the financials and conditions more, but again, the financials in a duplex are irrelevant, since people are paying based on comps not financials. 

We have contacted 1210 Capital and the American Association of Private Lenders and reported him.He was very good...but money up front to a bank account with a completely different name on it was a huge red flag.It is heart breaking, we are from Australia and we have a great deal but the way the contract is worded is making it difficult to fund and this guy just wasted our time.Oh well, back to the drawing board.CheersDale Zanker

We've got to get an engineer to draw up the subdivision first though.

A lock on it would be great just be sure to include the information in a lease when you draw it up so there is no surprises. 

Portland thought they were going to be hipster heaven, however, we have the hipster, but we're losing existing and can't attract new well-paying employers and TX is still drawing those.

Explain that you're a potential buyer and you have a contractor prepared to draw the appropriate permits to do the repairs- but you want to ensure you have reasonable time to do so (so you're not slammed with the fines).

The loan will be interest only during the build phase, and you’ll only pay interest on the cumulative amount after each draw.

There’s something about “nicer” that draws us in, but the numbers of “not quite so nice” are hard to beat. 

While we had an engineer in to stamp drawings, we did not do a full inspection of the basement, and there was some damage down there that came up in inspection when we went to sell.