It's going to be incredibly hard to get hard money funding for your first deal to be purchased at the steps. 

We'd likely lose our down payment of around $15K but break even in not owing any money.

I currently have about 9K saved up and was wondering, is it better to pay down 9K of my 70K debt now?

@Ramiro De Leon Congrats on taking the first step of saving up money and preparing yourself for your first purchase!

We actually (legally) made more money on our property because of the fire!

If I am understanding RTLO correctly and your response - as long as the security deposit is sitting in a separate subaccount (eg separate checking or savings account) in a personal bank account, it's not considered to be intermingled with personal finances.

I'm reasonably certain this owner does not need the money, so that's probably not a motivating factor.Please help David beat Goliath to the punch. 

He was able to fight the mugger off and then had him arrested - which is how the scheme was revealed.Only logical reason to accept cash is if you're trying to hide income from the IRS.Otherwise, require your tenants to send you money orders or deposit cash rent into your bank account.

Call some local hard money lenders and ask who they use.

They don't seem to consider our savings/checking accounts and that we get a big refund from the IRS which can be used toward a downpayment, nor do they consider the over 1M of equity in our assets.