BP is the ultimate real estate investing site around!

However, an buyers agent does help when negotiating and does save you a lot of time when you are doing multiple projects a month. 

You might as well save yourself the headache and put that $ into a mutual fund which will get you 6-8%, you should be looking for deals with 15% CoCR. $200/mo without paying your self for being a property manager is not a good deal!

My most recent credit score is fair-good and by my calculations, I will have $10K saved by the time that I am ready to purchase the property and move in, but that's my only liquid capital ($10k). 

If you saved as much as you could from your day job, how quickly could you pay off those loans?

Ultimately for now to get your house soldWhat you can do is tell him you need a conditional release of lien and you can put him on the disbursement of funds from the escrow company.

Operating expenses are very low because I use gas dryers (instead of electric), tankless water heaters for hot water, and high efficiency, front load washers to save water.  

I've done this twice: the first resulted in about $550 less in yearly taxes, the second only saved about $150.

The tide will rise and save all of us developers in 10 years, but being early is the same as being wrong.

I have been able to save ~$24,000 from my work from the past 6 summers.