Have a planned/practiced 1-2 sentences about how you help people buy and sell real estate.Keep your expenses low, track not only what you spend (personal, and business), and track your "lead indicators"...x hours daily lead generating, # people you talked with daily about real estate, # social media posts you created about real estate topics.  

Essentially all of the planning, permitting and projections ready to prepare the project for development and then sell the property with the additional 12 unit entitlement to a more seasoned or experienced developer.

I'm planning on moving forward with their latest deal, would be great to hear your experience.  

This is going to be a very tough scenario, I suggest you stop putting money into this deal until you get things sorted on the financing side.I would also be very careful with and sketical about any offers for 100% financing... it will not happen, they are lying 99.99999999999999% of the time.The only realistic way would be for you to find a private investor to come up with the down payment for the mortgage but a down payment will be needed.90% LTC is theoretically possible through a flip loan but in order to reach that level you would need to have a lot of completed projects under your belt over 2 years.20% is possible but with 25% you would have a lot more options.That is part of the issue with this transaction...The other issue is with HOW MANY loans you are seeking...This is not 1 loan because this is not 1 deal...You need 3 loans because you are doing 3 separate transactions at the same time with the same seller.Blanket loans do exist but they are not widely available.Each folio number is a separate deal...

He frequently coaches students on things like floor plan and he really is a master. 

In the early stages, they will often email a business plan and/or hold a webinar describing the investment. 

Real estate needs careful planning and strategy.

land flipping without entitlement plan is risky.

We are planning on using someone local to make sure all applicable laws and regulations are followed as we understand this is not a generic transaction.

There are over 20 active CPAs here in these forum assisting RE investors with their tax planning and strategies across multiple States.