I do rent to owns, lease/option, let the tenant earn some sweat equity and take care of the house.

Refinancing should reduce the overall payment and not increase it.

This is the sum of purchase price plus rehab dollars plus the 6 months house payment money plus a 10% to 20% emergency reserve for unexpected extra rehab costs popping up in the rehab process If you don't even need to use to 10% to 20% emergency fund then the loan reduces at the end and you don't borrow it.Example :  purchase price = 100,000 + 50,000 for rehab and 15,000 for reserve and x months of piti= 165,000 so 3.50 % down is then $ x5775.00HomeStyle is an alternative but on a 2 to 4 unit it is 25% down.

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With depreciation and interest expense, you often have a net loss which reduces your tax liability to nothing.

I also cleared out my personal savings (except $1000), and spent 6+ months pouring every extra penny that I earned and that my wife earned paying off a large chunk ($30,000+) of the debt. 

We are just now furnishing the rental portion to earn an extra few hundred a month.

@Kate Friedrick If you can summarize your receipts by category and put them into an Excel spreadsheet, that will probably reduce your costs, as the CPA will need to do that (if you don't do it for them).Also, remember, AN EXTENSION IS AN EXTENSION OF THE TIME TO FILE. 

Now, you've got an asset instead of a liability that's appreciating in value as and reducing debt, and you started now instead of 6 months from now, thus you're further ahead, and the price of the asset is lower now that it would be then.

Of course, the eventual plan is to refinance the home as soon as possible through a traditional mortgage, to reduce the excessive amount of costs with high interest rates from hml.