I would like to find someone with above average knowledge about investing that would be willing to help me gain knowledge about it in exchange for work on their properties.

People work hard to gain something and I have no right to use it inappropriately.

Check out GreatSchools.org for school information.Are you looking to defer the gain via a 1031 exchange down the road?

Initially I wanted to do the 203K FHA loan, buy and fix and gain instant equity.

The dryers had a coin slot, but the washers took more money and had a coin slide device.Someone figured out early that year that if you put quarters in every slot of the coin slide and pushed the coins halfway in, just short of the point when the coins fell through the slots in the device, and then put all your weight on the slide and physically yanked the slide out again, the washer would turn on and you would get a free cycle without paying.

If it's going to help you gain the confidence of friends and family so that you can scale, great.

@Matthew K. there are tax benefits to either strategy.If you've lived in your old house for 2 out of the last 5 years, you can exclude up to $250k ($500k if you're married) of the gain from your taxable income.If you use funds from a HELOC, you tap into the equity of your old home, pull out money tax free, and invest it.

In terms of the seller financing, you just need to sell them on minimizing their tax hit in year one if they stand to make a large capital gain on the sale.

If I flip a property in Virginia in less than a year I know that I will have to pay capital gains tax on the federal and income tax for the state.

The big thing to be aware of is that if/when you go to sell the property, you have to pay taxes on your paper gain at the time of sale and pay depreciation recapture.