Is your friend's friend's contribution worth nearly six times what you would pay a real estate agent for finding the deal and helping you through the purchase process and paperwork?

I think the moral aspect of taxes is that people should contribute equally as able, which is the basis of my flat rate taxation dream."

You may want to submit a lower offer and see if the 1st allows a short sale so you can potentially contribute money to the 2nd since it sounds like they may want more than what is being offered to them at an offer of 160k?

I’d recommend @Dave Foster who contributes a Lot to investors here.

Thank you for your contribution 

I would how ever ask for "Seller contribution" towards closing costs between 3-4% is the norm in most cases. 

I'm planning on having skin in the game and contributing to the down payment, however, leveraging OPM free's up my cash to be able to scale quicker. 

In addition, if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLC such as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a specialty trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.In addition, please note if you purchase debt-financed real estate with your IRA, unrelated debt finance income tax should apply to the income attributable to debt-financed real estate held by your IRA.

thanks for contributing to bigger pockets.. 

@Hira BakhshThe issue with trying to find a service provider on yelp is normally they are generalist CPA's and don't necessarily specialize in one specific industry.There are a couple of CPA's that contribute frequently on the biggerpockets message board. feel free to reach out to a couple to see which would be a good fit for you.