At closing IS where we as real estate investors desire profit in cash...but like water to ice (not wine or whine)...I am not a miracle worker...the cash (the devalued dollar) can be converted back to gold ( a choice not an obligation).

It sounds like you found the sweet spot in CA.Every investor has specific needs to fill.

I've always wanted to visit SC...sounds sweet!!  

To keep it short and sweet, I have about 20-25k cash currently sitting and I have to get it to work ASAP.

If one takes their sweet time, it can big the whole process down.That being said, if you're talking about a HELOC, the process is more time consuming than an unsecured LOC because the bank will order an appraisal.

From what you've described I'd be very careful and possibly not do it at all.I think you should research or talk to some people who had done condo conversions in the last cycle.I didn't do any, but my impression was that they really took off when singles and small multis became prohibitively expensive, but the demand was still there.While our market has certainly come back compared to, say, 5 years ago, I don't exactly get the sense that we're at that level of demand, the "condo conversion sweet spot" (when singles/multis get too expensive, but before the whole market falls).Besides researching the condo market in general over the past couple of years, another thing you'll want to pay attention to is the "affordability index" for SFs as I believe that is related to condo demand.

Sweet!

If you can somehow sweet the pot, I can make an exception.We recently past on a deal where you could obtain 75% LTV at purchase.

Sometimes the deal is so sweet that it makes up for the high taxes and you can always appeal a high assessment. 

As a newbie, it's kind of hard to gauge what the "sweet spot" is.