If you generally trust the guy, you could ask him to print out his reports from: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action This site is authorized by the FTC.This will be free to the user once per year and should report his outstanding recorded debts.  

I spoke in Clumbus, OH a week ago and there was a gentleman in a wheel chair there - I'll be damned if that slows him down any.  

A 50k rehab sounds doable, but a horrible discovery could send a 50k rehab into the land of 80k which is a very stressful place for us - if not damn near impossible to even reach. 

bad news is you sound cash poor, I must say you sound young and are getting great exp. my humble advise would be to take a look from space see where you want to be in ten years, tell yourself you will need 20 to 25 percent to get into the deal you want to own  keep your eye on that prize, and take the advise from colleges above sell, flip, reflip only hold on to what gives you outstanding cash on cash returns and bank returns continue to flip and save money counting to buy up, at a glance your cash flow is to low to tie up money in this market,

Hopefully you're using a title agent to perform the closing, they should perform a lien search and find any outstanding mortgages, taxes, etc.

The deal looks like this:Loan outstanding: $244,000 QuickenLoan and it is a FNMAOther debt: Base on my preliminary title search $0Equity: $85,000The owner wants $350,000 based on a recent comp in the area.

Damn, someone got removed.  

Got approval, but then the appraiser told them a fence permit was still outstanding (he was wrong) and they got cold feet saying that I could be vulnerable to mechanics liens and/or my taxes could go up do to additional improvements I could do with an open permit/inspection.  

It requires a minimum payment of 2.5% of the outstanding balance.

The rate is 8% and will require a minimum payment of 2.5% of the outstanding balance.